No
English critic, therefore, who felt himself worthy to have been born a
German, would venture to question the postulate on which all sound
principles of criticism with regard to this subject must infallibly be
founded: that, given any play of unknown or doubtful authorship, the
worse it was, the likelier was it to be Shakespeare's. (This proposition
was received with every sign of unanimous assent.) Now, on this ground
he was prepared to maintain that the claims of _Andromana_ to their most
respectful, their most cordial, their most unhesitating acceptance were
absolutely beyond all possibility of parallel. Not _Mucedorus_ or _Fair
Em_, not _The Birth of Merlin_ or _Thomas Lord Cromwell_, could
reasonably or fairly be regarded as on the same level of worthlessness
with this incomparable production. No mortal man who had survived its
perusal could for a moment hesitate to agree that it was the most
incredibly, ineffably, inconceivably, unmitigatedly, irredeemably,
inexpressibly damnable piece of bad work ever perpetrated by human hand.
No mortal critic of the genuine Anglo-German school could therefore
hesitate for a moment to agree that in common consistency he was bound to
accept it as the possible work of no human hand but the hand of the New
Shakespeare.
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