_Punch_ was less considerate in his treatment of the performance of Shelley's _Cenci_ by the Shelley Society which had been founded by "a Dr. Furnivall," the scholar and redoubtable controversialist whom _Punch_ had already attacked in connexion with the Browning Society. The performance was described by a member of the society as four hours of monotonous horror:-- "The actors and actresses in the labour of love did all that could be done; but the play is proved to be impossible, and so let us leave it in the hope (shared by many of my fellow-members) that before another 'sixty years' it will be possible to debate the matter calmly, but _not_ to put '_The Cenci_' on the Stage." _Punch_ was less hopeful. He regarded "the literary disease of which the Shelley Society may be regarded as an exemplar" as an ineradicable malady. [Sidenote: _"L'Assommoir" in French and English_] Sir Frank Benson's productions of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Taming of the Shrew_ in 1890 come in for more commendation of the scenic effects than the acting, but a favourable exception is made in favour of the late Stephen Phillips, afterwards better known as poet and dramatist. _Punch's_ notice of the late Sir Herbert Tree's Hamlet in the summer of 1892 is a good specimen of discreetly veiled disparagement. But it does not quite accord with Gilbert's famous description, "funny without being vulgar," as _Punch_ considered some of the new readings and by-play to be tasteless and grotesque. It was this production that gave rise to that "desperate saying" that to solve the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, all that was necessary was to let Tree play Hamlet and then open the two graves and see which of the mighty dead had turned.