'Shakespeare appears in the character of the modern Prometheus': C. M. Ingleby and Victorian Shakespeare Controversies

Accounts of Victorian Shakespeare scholarship often emphasise a disjunction between the modern and the Victorian. Two particularly colourful episodes, the Perkins Folio controversy (1852-1861) and the brief history of the New Shakspere Society (1873-1881), reinforce this impression. This essay suggests that a different perspective can be gained by revisiting these episodes and focussing on the writings of a now little-regarded figure, C. M. Ingleby, who played a significant role in both. Ingleby’s views on the role of scholarship and professional organisation in the study of Shakespeare, in particular his identification of scholarship with the ambivalent role of Hephaestus, in the Prometheus myth, highlight issues around professional literary study that we continue to share with the Victorians.