[On the above date Mr. Dickens presided at the Adelphi Theatre, at
a public meeting, for the purpose of founding the Shakespeare
Schools, in connexion with the Royal Dramatic College, and
delivered the following address:]

Ladies and gentlemen--Fortunately for me, and fortunately for you,
it is the duty of the Chairman on an occasion of this nature, to be
very careful that he does not anticipate those speakers who come
after him. Like Falstaff, with a considerable difference, he has
to be the cause of speaking in others. It is rather his duty to
sit and hear speeches with exemplary attention than to stand up to
make them; so I shall confine myself, in opening these proceedings
as your business official, to as plain and as short an exposition
as I can possibly give you of the reasons why we come together.

First of all I will take leave to remark that we do not come
together in commemoration of Shakespeare. We have nothing to do
with any commemoration, except that we are of course humble
worshippers of that mighty genius, and that we propose by-and-by to
take his name, but by no means to take it in vain. If, however,
the Tercentenary celebration were a hundred years hence, or a
hundred years past, we should still be pursuing precisely the same
object, though we should not pursue it under precisely the same
circumstances. The facts are these: There is, as you know, in
existence an admirable institution called the Royal Dramatic
College, which is a place of honourable rest and repose for
veterans in the dramatic art. The charter of this college, which