Relevance

Why is the secrecy or enigma surrounding the Shakespeare authorship relevant now? Why is it important to discover who the real author was? Does it really matter?

The answer to these questions depends on whether you are at all interested in establishing the truth. For many people the outer semblance of something may well be all that they desire, and the Shakespeare plays and poems can be enjoyed without knowing the author.

But for those who are inquisitive, who want to search out the truth, who believe that it is important to know who the author was in order to gain any real and deep insights into the plays, who wish to honour the real author and establish a truer history of the period and development of English culture, then to know who really wrote the Shakespeare works is of paramount importance.

Even more than this, to understand the plays in their deeper context, with their profundity of wisdom and allegorical nature, the authorship cannot be ignored, as it is a key to unlocking this understanding.

Then there is Bacon's use of secrecy in the Shakespeare authorship for making it into a treasure trail or game of hide-and-seek, its purpose being to train us in the Art of Discovery. Once we have discovered and been trained in this art, we can then apply it with the help of the plays to comprehend the emotions, thoughts and actions of various types of people and their situations, and hence to understand the laws that lie behind all things, especially the law of love, which Bacon considered to be the supreme law of the universe. Once we recognise and know these laws, we can then learn to apply them in our lives to make the world a better place for all – mankind and nature.

Peter Dawkins, 2006

(See the author's book, The Shakespeare Enigma)

The Francis Bacon Research Trust