The Chairman then proceeded to recapitulate the work done and the
benefits conferred by the Society during the twelve months which had
elapsed since its foundation on that day (April 1st) last year. They had
ample reason to congratulate themselves and him on the result. They had
established an entirely new kind of criticism, working by entirely new
means towards an entirely new end, in honour of an entirely new kind of
Shakespeare. They had proved to demonstration and overwhelmed with
obloquy the incompetence, the imbecility, the untrustworthiness, the
blunders, the forgeries, the inaccuracies, the obliquities, the utter
moral and literary worthlessness, of previous students and societies.
They had revealed to the world at large the generally prevalent ignorance
of Shakespeare and his works which so discreditably distinguished his
countrymen. This they had been enabled to do by the simple process of
putting forward various theories, and still more various facts, but all
of equally incontrovertible value and relevance, of which no
Englishman--he might say, no mortal--outside the Society had ever heard
or dreamed till now.
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