Baconian theory

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The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship holds that Sir Francis Bacon, wrote the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare.

Contents 1 Terminology 2 Overview 3 History of Baconian theory 4 Autobiographical evidence 5 Credentials for authorship 6 Gray's Inn revels 1594-5 7 Verbal parallels 7.1 Gesta Grayorum 7.2 Promus 7.3 Published work 8 Criticisms 9 Notes 10 External links 10.1 Baconian 10.2 Stratfordian

[edit] Terminology

Sir Francis Bacon, was a major scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).

Those who subscribe to the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare work generally refer to themselves as Baconians while those who take the position that William Shakspere of Stratford wrote the works they call Stratfordians.

Baptised as William Shakspere, the Stratford man used several variants of his name during his lifetime including Shakespeare. Baconians use "Shakspere" for the glover's son from Stratford and "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" for the author to avoid the assumption that the Stratford man wrote the work.

[edit] Overview

The most popular view today is that William Shakespere of Stratford who was an actor in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men) wrote the poems and plays that bear his name and it is the view that most academic scholars subscribe to. However, Baconians believe that scholars have been so focused on the details of Shakspere's life that they have neglected to investigate the wider picture, namely, the many facts that they claim connect Sir Francis Bacon to the Shakespeare work.

The Baconian's first objective is to attempt to establish a reasonable doubt in the Stratford man's authorship claim, then having justified the need to examine an alternative candidate, cite the many perceived connections between Sir Francis Bacon and the Shakespeare work (see Shakespearean authorship). As with all alternative candidates, the Stratford man is claimed to have acted as a mask for the concealed author.

The main Baconian evidence consists of the following: the presentation of a motive for concealment; the circumstances surrounding the first known performance of the Comedy of Errors; the close proximity of Bacon to the William Strachey letter upon which many scholars think The Tempest was based; perceived allusions to legal personalities in the plays that Bacon knew; the many supposed parallels with the plays of Bacon's published work and entries in the Promus (Bacon's private wastebook); Bacon's interest in writing civil histories; and perceived autobiographical allusions in the plays. Since Bacon had a first-hand knowledge of government cipher methods,^[1] Baconians usually see it as feasible that he left his signature somewhere in the Shakespeare work.

[edit] History of Baconian theory

In a letter to the barrister and poet John Davies in 1603, Bacon refers to himself as a 'concealed poet'.^[2] Consequently, Baconians claim that certain of his contemporaries knew of and hinted at his secret authorship. For example, the satirical poets Joseph Hall (1574-1656) and John Marston (1575-1634) in the so-called Hall-Marston satires,^[3][4] between them discuss a character called Labeo in relation to Shakespeare's long poem Venus and Adonis (1593). Perceiving that Hall is criticising Venus and Adonis as a lewd Mirror-genre poem,^[5] Marston writes 'What, not mediocria firma from thy spight?', mediocra firma being Bacon's family motto.

In 1781, a Warwickshire clergyman and scholar called James Wilmot, having failed to find significant evidence from his research in the Stratford district relating to Shakspere's authorship, suspected that Shakspere could not be the author of the works that bear his name. Wilmot was familiar with the writings of Francis Bacon and formed the opinion that he was more likely the real author of the Shakespearean canon. Persuaded of Bacon's authorship of the Shakespeare poems and plays, he related his view to James Cowell who revealed it in a paper read to the Ipswich Philosophical Society in 1805.

The idea that Sir Francis Bacon penned the Shakespeare work was revived by William Henry Smith in a letter to Lord Ellesmere in 1856. This took the form of a 16-page pamphlet entitled Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays?^[6] in which Smith noted several letters to and from Francis Bacon that apparently hinted at his authorship. A year later, both Smith and Delia Bacon published books expounding the Baconian Theory.^[7][8] In the latter work, Shakespeare was represented as a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, whose agenda was to propagate an anti-monarchial system of philosophy by secreting it in the text.

After a diligent deciphering of the Elizabethan handwriting in Francis Bacon's wastebook, the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, Constance Mary Fearon Pott (1833-1915) noted that many of the ideas and figures of speech in Bacon's book could also be found in the Shakespeare plays. Potts later founded the Francis Bacon Society in 1885 before publishing her Bacon-centered theory in 1891.^[9] In this, Potts developed the view of W.F.C. Wigston^[10] that Francis Bacon was the founding member of the Rosicrucians, a secret society of occult philosophers, and claimed that they secretly created art, literature and drama, including the entire Shakespeare canon, before adding the symbols of the rose and cross to their work.

The late 19th century interest in the Baconian theory continued the theme that Bacon had secreted encoded messages in the plays. In 1888, Ignatius L. Donnelly, a U.S. Congressman, science fiction author, and Atlantis theorist, set out his notion of ciphers in The Great Cryptogram, while Elizabeth Wells Gallup, having read Bacon's account of his 'bi-lateral cipher' (in which two fonts were used as a method of encoding in binary format), claimed to have found evidence that Bacon not only authored the Shakespearean works but, along with the Earl of Essex, he was a child of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester who had been secretly married. Unfortunately, no one else was able to discern these hidden messages.

The German mathemetician Georg Cantor believed Shakespeare was Bacon, although he was apparently afflicted with bipolar disorder and/or depression and was suffering a bout of illness in 1884 when he researched the subject, eventually publishing two pamphlets supporting the theory in 1896-1897.

The American physician Dr. Orville Owen was so convinced in his own cipher method that in 1909 he began excavating the bed of the river Wye, near Chepstow Castle, England, in the search for Bacon's original Shakespeare manuscripts. Such was his conviction, that only his death in 1924 prevented him from persisting with the project.

More recent Baconian theory ignores the esoteric following that the theory had earlier attracted. Whereas previously the main reason for secrecy was Bacon's desire for high office, this theory posits that his main motivation for concealment was the completion of his Great Instauration project.^[11][12] The argument runs that in order to advance the project's scientific component, he intended to set up new institutes of experimentation to gather the data (his scientific 'Histories') to which his inductive method could be applied. However, he needed to attain high office to gain the requisite influence,^[13] and being known as a dramatist (then a low-class profession) would have impeded his prospects. Realising that play-acting was used by the ancients 'as a means of educating men's minds to virtue,'^[14] the claim is that he set out the otherwise unpublished moral philosophy component of his Great Instauration project in the Shakespeare work (moral 'Histories'). In this way, he could influence the nobility through dramatic performance with his observations on what constitutes 'good' government (e.g. Prince Hal's relationship with the Chief Justice in Henry IV, Part 2).

[edit] Autobiographical evidence

It is known that as early as 1595, Bacon employed scriveners^[15] which, one could argue, would protect his anonymity and account for Heminge and Condell, two actors in Shakspere's company, remarking about Shakspere that 'wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers'.^[16] Baconians point out that Sir Francis Bacon's rise to the post of Attorney General in 1613 coincided with the end of Shakespeare the author's output. They also stress that he was the only authorship candidate still alive when the First Folio (1623) was published and that it occurred in a period (1621-1626) when Bacon was publishing his work for posterity after his fall from office gave him the free time.

Shakespeare's King Henry VIII (1613) can be interpreted as containing an allusion to Bacon's fall from office in 1621 suggesting that the play had been altered at least five years after Shakspere's death in 1616. The argument relates to Cardinal Wolsey's forfeiture of the Great Seal in the play which might be construed as departing from the facts of history to mirror Bacon's own loss. Bacon lost office on a charge of accepting bribes to influence his judgment of legal cases, whereas Wolsey's crime was to petition the Pope to delay sanctioning King Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon. Nevertheless, in Act 3, Scene 2, just before the Great Seal is reclaimed, King Henry's main concern is an inventory of Wolsey's wealth that has inadvertently been delivered to him:

King Henry. ... The several parcels of his Plate, his Treasure,

Rich stuffs, and ornaments of household, which

I find at such a proud rate, that it outspeaks

Possession of a subject.

A few lines later Wolsey loses the Seal with the stage direction:

Enter to Cardinal Wolsey the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earl of Surrey

and the Lord Chamberlaine.

However, in history, only the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk performed this task^[17] and Shakespeare has inexplicably added the Earl of Surrey and the Lord Chamberlaine. In Bacon's case King James 'commissioned the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlaine, and the Earl of Arundel, to receive and take charge of it'.^[18] Given that Thomas Howard was the 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey, then the two noblemen that Shakespeare has added are two of the four that attended Bacon.

[edit] Credentials for authorship

There is evidence that appears to confirm that Bacon had some of the credentials for writing the Shakespeare work. For example, in relation to Shakespeare's extensive vocabulary, there are the words of Dr Samuel Jonson, the author of the first dictionary: 'a Dictionary of the English language might be compiled from Bacon's writing alone'.^[19] The poet Percy Bysshe Shelly apparently testifies against Bacon's supposed unwavering dry legal style: 'Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his intellect satisfies the intellect ..."^[20]

In Ben Jonson's First Folio tribute to 'The Author Mr William Shakespeare' he writes:

Or, when thy sockes were on

Leave thee alone

Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome

Sent forth, or since from their ashes come.

In a later work, Jonson uses an identical figure to commend Sir Francis Bacon: 'But his learned and able (though unfortunate) successor [Bacon] is he who hath filled up all the numbers [verses], and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or to haughty Rome ... so that he may be named, and stand as the mark [target] of our language.'^[21]

Bacon had an interest in civil histories, the evidence for this being his book History of the Reign of Henry VII (1621), his article the Memorial of Elizabeth (1608), and his letter to King James in 1610 lobbying for financial support to write a history of Great Britain stating that 'I shall have the advantage which almost no writer of history hath had, in that I shall write of times not only since I could remember, but since I could observe.'^[22] Bacon and Shakespeare together managed to completely cover the monarchs in the period 1377-1603 and avoid duplicating each other's historical ground and, in 1623, Bacon gave different excuses to Prince Charles for not working on a commissioned treatise of Henry VIII (which had already been covered by the Shakespeare play in 1613).^[23] In the end, he wrote only two pages.

[edit] Gray's Inn revels 1594-5

Gray's Inn law school traditionally held revels over Christmas where dancing and feasting were complemented by plays and masques. Prior to the 1594-5 revels, the evidence points to all the performed plays being amateur productions.^[24] In his commentary on the Gesta Grayorum, a contemporary account of the 1594-5 revels, Bland^[25] informs us that they were 'intended as a training ground in all the manners that are learned by nobility ... dancing, music, declamation, acting.' James Spedding, the Victorian editor of Bacon's Works, thought that Sir Francis Bacon was involved in writing this account.^[26]

The Gesta Grayorum^[27] is a pamphlet of 68 pages and was first published in 1688. It informs us that the Comedy of Errors received its first known performance at these revels at 9pm, 28 December 1594 (Innocents Day) when 'a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the Players'. Whoever the players were, there is evidence that Shakspere and his company were not among them for according to the royal Chamber accounts dated 15 March 1595 (see Figure^[28]) he and the Lord Chamberlain's Men were performing for the Queen at Greenwich on Innocents Day. Chambers^[29] informs us that 'the Court performances were always at night, beginning about 10pm and ending at 1pm' so that their presence at both performances is unlikely. Furthermore, the Gray's Inn Pension Book that recorded all payments made by the Gray's Inn committee, exhibits no payment to either a dramatist or professional company for this play.^[30] Baconians interpret this as suggesting that, following precedent, the Comedy of Errors was both written and performed by Inns of Court members as part of their participation in the Gray's Inn celebrations. One problem with this argument is that the Gesta Grayorum refers to the players as "a Company of base and common fellows",^[31] which would apply well to a professional theatre company, but not to law students. However, given the jovial tone of the Gesta and given that the description occurred during a skit in which a 'Sorceror or Conjuror' was accused of causing 'disorders with a play of errors or confusions', Baconians interpret the phrase as a comic description of the Gray's Inn players. Gray's Inn actually had a company of players during the revels because the Gray's Inn Pension Book records on 11 February [1595] that "one hyndred marks [£66.67] [are] to be layd out & bestowyd upon the gentlemen for their sports and shewes this Shrovetyde at the court before the Queens Majestie".^[32]

There is evidence that Bacon had control over the Gray's Inn players. In a letter to Lord Burghley from prior to 1598, he writes "I am sorry the joint masque from the four Inns of Court faileth ... [and] there are a dozen gentlemen of Gray's Inn that will be ready to furnish a masque"^[33], and the dedication to a masque by Francis Beaumont performed at Whitehall in 1613 describes Bacon as the "chief contriver" of its performances at Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple.^[34] He also appears to have been their treasurer prior to the 1594-5 revels. ^[35]

The discrepancy surrounding the whereabouts of the Chamberlain's Men is normally explained by theatre historians as an error in the Chamber Accounts. W.W. Greg suggested the following explanation:

"[T]he accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber show payments to this company [the Chamberlain's Men] for performances before the Court on both 26 Dec. and 28 Dec ... These accounts, however, also show a payment to the Lord Admiral's men in respect of 28 Dec. It is true that instances of two court performances on one night do occur elsewhere, but in view of the double difficulty involved, it is perhaps best to assume that in the Treasurer's accounts, 28 Dec. is an error for 27 Dec."^[36]

[edit] Verbal parallels

[edit] Gesta Grayorum

The final paragraph of the Gesta Grayorum (see Figure) uses a 'greater lessens the smaller' construction that occurs in an exchange from Act 5, Scene 1 of the Merchant of Venice (1594-97):

Ner. When the moon shone we did not see the candle

Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less,

A substitute shines brightly as a King

Until a King be by, and then his state

Empties itself, as doth an inland brooke

Into the main of waters ...

The Merchant of Venice uses both the same theme as the Gesta Grayorum and the same three examples to illustrate it: a subject obscured by royalty, a small light overpowered by that of a heavenly body, and a river diluted on reaching the sea. Sir Francis Bacon, in an essay^[37] from 1603, makes use of two of these examples: 'The second condition [of perfect mixture] is that the greater draws the less. So we see that when two lights do meet, the greater doth darken and drown the less. And when a small river runs into a greater, it loseth both the name and stream.' A figure similar to 'loseth both the name and stream' occurs in Scene 3, Act 1 of Hamlet (1600-01):

Hamlet. With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Sir Francis Bacon was careful to cite his sources and he does not mention Shakespeare once in any of his work. Furthermore, Baconians claim that if the Gesta Grayorum was circulated prior to its publication in 1688 (and no one knows) then it was probably only among Inns of Court members.

[edit] Promus

In the nineteenth century, a waste book entitled the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies^[38] was discovered containing 1,655 hand written proverbs, metaphors, aphorisms, salutations and other miscellany. Although some entries appear original, many have been drawn from the Latin and Greek writers Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Ovid; John Heywood's Proverbes (1562); Marcel de Montaigne's Essays (1575), and various other French, Italian and Spanish sources. Apart from a section at the end, Sir Edward Maunde-Thompson declared the writing to be in Bacon's hand, and in fact his signature appears on folio 115 verso. Only two folios of the wastebook were dated, the third sheet (5 December 1594) and the 32nd sheet (27 January 1595 [that is, 1596]). Many of these entries also occur in Shakespeare's First Folio and a few examples are given below:

Parolles. So I say both of Galen and Paracelsus (1603-5 All's Well That Ends Well, Act 2, Scene 3)

Galens compositions not Paracelsus separations (Promus, folio 84, verso)

Launce. Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living (1589-93 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 3, Scene 1)

Now toe on her distaff then she can spynne/The world runs on wheels (Promus, folio 96, verso)

Hostesse. O, that right should o'rcome might. Well of sufferance, comes ease (1598 Henry IV, Part 2, Act 5, Scene 4)

Might overcomes right/Of sufferance cometh ease (Promus, folio 103, recto)

While the orthodox view is that these are commonplace phrases, the occurrence in the last two examples of two ideas from the same Promus folio in the same Shakespeare speech must decrease this probability.

[edit] Published work

There is an example from Troilus and Cressida (2.2) that shows that both Bacon and Shakespeare shared the same interpretation of one of Aristotle's opinions.

Hector. Paris and Troilus, you have both said well,

And on the cause and question now in hand

Have glozed, but superficially: not much

Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought

Unfit to hear moral philosophy:

The reasons you allege do more conduce

To the hot passion of distemper'd blood

We find a similar view in Bacon's work: 'Is not the opinion of Aristotle very wise and worthy to be regarded, “that young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy”, because the boiling heat of their affections is not yet settled, nor tempered with time and experience?' ^[39]

In fact, what Aristotle actually said was: 'Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; ... and further since he tends to follow his passions his study will be vain and unprofitable ...'.^[40] The added metaphorical coincidence of heat and passion and the replacement of ‘political science’ with ‘moral philosophy’ is used by both Shakespeare and Bacon. One could argue that since Shakespeare's play precedes Bacon's publication then the latter borrowed from the former although one needs to consider whether Bacon would have cited his source. One could also argue, since Aristotle equates political science with ethics in his ethics, that both authors merely read the text and made the simple inference (not "interpretation") Aristotle makes. No one who reads that text thoroughly thinks that Aristotle means the youth should study the moral philosophy outlined in the ethics and not study political science; it is clear enough that both are one in the same for Aristotle. “Hot passions” is a common metaphor for what afflicts the youth and is used, at least in part, by Aristotle who apparently influenced both authors.

[edit] Criticisms

Mainstream scholars reject the Baconian theory along with other "alternative authorship" theories, citing a range of evidence against the anti-Stratfordian position, not least the fact that it relies on a conspiracy theory.

They reject the anti-Stratfordians' claim that Shakespeare had insufficient education to write the plays. It is usually pointed out that as the son of an Alderman, Shakespeare would have grown up in a family that had a position of some importance in Stratford, and it would be surprising if he had not attended the local grammar school. Such schools were founded to educate boys from Shakespeare's moderately well-to-do background.

In the 1623 First Folio Shakespeare is explicitly recognised as the plays' author by the publishers Heminges and Condell (see facsimiles of their introduction and dedication, first page[1] second page[2]). In his prefatory poem to the First Folio, Ben Jonson also refers to Shakespeare as the "swan of Avon", tying the "Shakespeare" of the Folio to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon (facsimile of the poem: first page [3] and second page [4]).

The belief of Jonson, Heminges and Condell in Shakespeare's authorship is supported by a mass of corroborating evidence [5]. As such, it is arguable that a successful conspirary would have required a massive coverup - a coverup which would have stood only a small chance of success owing to the sheer number of people involved. Orthodox Shakespeare scholars often cite Occam's razor: the principle that the simplest and best-evidenced explanation (that the plays were written by Shakespeare of Stratford) is overwhelmingly likely to be the correct one. A critique of all the alternative authorship theories can be found in Samuel Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives.^[41]. On the other hand, the Shake-speare work had only minor popularity compared to today and it is unlikely that many people would have cared about the deception. .

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

[edit] Baconian

• N. Cockburn, The Bacon–Shakespeare Question, private publication 1998 (Contents) (A barrister's overview of the evidence: copy available from London Baconian Society)
• Peter Dawkins: The Shakespeare Enigma, Polair Publ., London 2004, ISBN 0-9545389-4-3 (engl.)
• Amelie Deventer von Kunow, Francis Bacon: Last of the Tudors, trans. Willard Parker (1924)
• Penn Leary, Cryptographic Shakespeare (n.d.)
• Why I'm Not an Oxfordian, by Jerome Harner

[edit] Stratfordian

• The Shakespeare Authorship Page
• The Bard's Beard — A Time Article