Bacon-Shakespeare

"Dramatical, or Representative Poetry, which brings the world upon the stage, is of excellent use… The care of the Ancients was that it should instruct the minds of men unto virtue. Nay, wise men and great philosophers have accounted it as the archet or musical bow of the mind."

There is no real evidence that the actor Will Shakspere was the author of the Shakespeare works attributed to him. On the other hand it was common in the 16th/17th centuries for courtiers and noblemen to write anonymously or under pseudonyms, often symbolical, and sometimes to make use of living people as masks for their secret authorship.

‘Shakespeare’, particularly when printed with a hyphen as ‘Shake-speare’, as it often was on the title-pages of plays, is a clear indication of a symbolic pseudonym. It is the literal meaning of Pallas Athena, the name of the goddess who is the Supreme Muse (or Tenth Muse) of Poetry and the Arts, and who, together with her companion Apollo, is represented in myth as shaking her lance at the dragon of ignorance—a reference which Ben Jonson used in his tributory poem to the Author in the First Folio of Shakespeare plays.

The Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford-upon-Avon likens the Bard to Nestor, Socrates and Virgil. Nestor was a renowned statesman, lawyer and judge. Socrates was acclaimed in his own time as the greatest of all philosophers and proclaimed by the Delphic oracle as the wisest of mankind. He was the advocate of clarity and the inductive procedure, was famed as an orator and wrote plays under the mask of another living person. Virgil was an initiate of the Ancient Mysteries, basing his writings upon them, and was acclaimed as the Prince of Latin Poets. He also is said to have written under the mask of another person. These comparisons are obviously not chosen by chance.

The evidence within the plays shows that the author was:-

• educated at Cambridge University, which fact is confirmed by a contemporary scholar, William Clerke, who implies in his Polimanteia that the author ‘sweet Shak-speare’ was a graduate of Cambridge University and a fine classical scholar;

• an expert lawyer and member of one of the Inns of Court;

• a parliamentarian and statesman;

• a member of the Court;

• widely travelled with first-hand knowledge of other lands, peoples and courts of Europe;

• a philosopher and initiate;

• a primary enhancer and re-creator of the English language;

• an expert on classical mythology and philosophy;

• a multi-linguist and widely read in books not then translated into English;

• alive and writing plays between the late 1580’s and 1613, and still revising and augmenting some of them right up until 1623, when the First Shakespeare Folio was published with new material relating to contemporary events inserted by the author.

Only one man fits this description—Sir Francis Bacon—and much evidence exists to confirm this, laid out in the form of a treasure hunt.

Poesie and Drama were described by Bacon in such a way as to show that they belong to the 4th Part of his Great Instauration of all Arts and Sciences. He declared that he was going the way of the Ancients in presenting truths through drama and allegory, and would teach his method of how to discover truth by imitating the divine game of hide-and-seek:-

As a previous Lord Chancellor of England, Richard de Bury, declared:-

And as Jacques, the mouthpiece of the author in As You Like It, says:-

The motley, mask, drama—an entertaining and challenging education! A mirror of nature held up to our eyes so that we might see ourselves. A game of hide and seek in which we might bring out the best in ourselves and thereby uncover the truth.

But there is no dogma and no compulsion to take part in the game, or even to see what is there waiting as a gift for us. It is like Portia’s music playing softly in the background, selecting the suitor and inspiring the right choice.

Francis Bacon was referred to by his contemporaries as the supreme poet and leader of all other poets; one who wrote poetry secretly and philosophy publicly, who renovated philosophy in the socks of comedy and buskins of tragedy (i.e. on the stage). He was likened to Apollo, the Daystar and leader of the choir of Muses, and to Athena, the Tenth Muse, both Spear-Shakers. He was the head of a philanthropic Rosicrucian Society (i.e. the ‘spear-shaking’ Red Cross knights or St. Georges) dedicated to the upliftment and illumination of the world. His work (especially his Shakespeare drama and poetry) inspires and teaches us even now; yet there is much still hidden from our eyes, awaiting the time when we should discover and understand it, and put it into practice for the well-being of the whole world.

© Peter Dawkins, 1999

The Francis Bacon Research Trust