1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ingleby, Clement Mansfield

INGLEBY, CLEMENT MANSFIELD (1823–1886), English Shakespearian scholar, was born at Edgbaston, Birmingham, on the 29th of October 1823, the son of a solicitor. After taking his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, he entered his father’s office, eventually becoming a partner. In 1859 he abandoned the law and left Birmingham to live near London. He contributed articles on literary, scientific and other subjects to various magazines, but from 1874 devoted himself almost entirely to Shakespearian literature. His first work in this field had been an exposure of the manipulations of John Payne Collier, entitled The Shakespeare Fabrications (1859); his work as a commentator began with The Still Lion (1874), enlarged in the following year into Shakespeare Hermeneutics. In this book many of the then existing difficulties of Shakespeare’s text were explained. In the same year (1875) he published the Centurie of Prayse, a collection of references to Shakespeare and his works between 1592 and 1692. His Shakespeare: the Man and the Book was published in 1877–1881; he also wrote Shakespeare’s Bones (1882), in which he suggested the disinterment of Shakespeare’s bones and an examination of his skull. This suggestion, though not due to vulgar curiosity, was regarded, however, by public opinion as sacrilegious. He died on the 26th of September 1886, at Ilford, Essex. Although Ingleby’s reputation now rests solely on his works on Shakespeare, he wrote on many other subjects. He was the author of hand-books on metaphysic and logic, and made some contributions to the study of natural science. He was at one time vice-president of the New Shakspere Society, and one of the original trustees of the “Birthplace.”