132 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



ing. A committee, consisting of the President, Vice- 

 President White and the Treasurer, was appointed to 

 report at an adjourned meeting of the Directors a ticket 

 for officers to be voted on at the annual meeting. 



The President and the Treasurer were made a commit- 

 tee to look after the interests of the Institute under the 

 will of the late George Plumer Smith of Philadelphia. 



The President, Vice-President White and Mr. Hines 

 were constituted a committee to consider what action, if 

 any, should be taken under the vote of the Institute on 

 January 24, 1898, calling for a fit memorial of the late 

 Mr. Hunt, to be spread upon the records of the Society, 

 said committee to report at an adjourned meeting. 



The thanks of the Institute were voted, and the Presi- 

 dent was requested to communicate them to Miss Eliza- 

 beth C. Osgood, and also to Miss Mary S. Cleveland, 

 the Chairman of the Auxiliary Committee, and to the 

 ladies of that committee, for their aid at the Jubilee. 



Monday Evening ', April 18, 1898. — Regular meet- 

 ing in the Library rooms. Mr. Arthur H. Chase of 

 Salem read a paper on the theme " Did Shakespeare write 

 Shakespeare?" He said that it has been stated that 

 Shakespeare was an illiterate man, and that although, in 

 his day, a noted actor and theatrical manager, acting these 

 plays in his own theatre, he could neither read nor write. 

 Mr. Chase then asked why Bacon, if he were the author 

 of these plays and sonnets, chose such an ignorant man to 

 father them. Or why he should not give to the public 

 under his own name the sonnets at least, if not the whole, 

 as their merit was then recognized, and nothing like them 

 has been written before or since. The paper was elabo- 

 rate and scholarly. When Mr. Chase had concluded, 

 Professor Morse took issue with the speaker and made a 



