On Bacon Writing Shakespeare

A repository of evidence that “William Shake-speare” was instead the literary arm of Francis Bacon and his writing practice.

Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Shakespeare works: anonymous (1591–1598); named (1598–1623)

William Shakspur of Stratford-upon-Avon (1564–1616)

Argument One: William Shakspur Never Wrote A Thing

The reason there are authorship theories is because the historical evidence linking 38 masterpieces to William Shakspur man from Stratford-upon-Avon is powerfully sparse, and Shakespeare’s biographies are unusually contrived.

The Missing Evidence

Biographies are traditionally based on records of existence: private letters, manuscripts, diaries, ownership deeds, administrations, other people’s accounts. In one study, of the 23 next-most-well-known writers in London in the 1590s and 1600s, records exist that describe each of them as writers, plus, handwritten material survived for 15 of them, receipts of payment for writing services exist for 14 of them, private letters exist for 13 of them, and 11 have original manuscripts of their work still intact. Shakespeare has none of these. [1]

For reference, Voltaire, a playwright who lived in the same century, left 20,000 private letters upon his death. Even Ben Jonson, the next most influential writer from the time, cited by historians as Shakespeare’s closest friend and eye witness, left hundreds of private letters, receipts of payment of writing, original manuscripts, handwritten material, and miscellaneous records with reference to his profession.

“Shakespeare” —- a man intimately familiar with royal courts, law, foreign lands, and classical works — left no papers documenting his travels or education, no personal library, no correspondence with other writers or patrons (including Ben Jonson, who called “Shakespeare” the greatest writer of all time — more on that later), no miscellaneous records relating to him as a poet, dramatist or writer of any sort, and no original manuscript of any play, poem, or other prose composition.

The Stratford Connection

The bulk of evidence used by Shakespeare’s biographers rests on the authority of the title pages of the plays in the First Folio, where Ben Jonson references Shakespeare in the prologue and includes his portrait (made posthumously), and because there are no personal records, biographers tie the plays to a man named “Shaxpur” or “Shakspur” from Stratford-upon-Avon, who appeared as an actor in two Ben Jonson plays. For this man, there are six words of handwriting that have survived — six shaky signatures on legal documents that read his name.

If the conventional wisdom is to be believed, the greatest ever playwright’s parents were illiterate, his wife Anne was illiterate, and his children were illiterate (unlike the children of every other great writer ever). The actor from Stratford never went to college nor had any schooling at all; he was surrounded by illiterate people from birth, never owned a library, and is believed never to have traveled outside England.

According to a vicar in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakspur is thought to have died in 1616 from an illness after a night of drinking with Ben Jonson. His death was a non-event even within the town, with no lamenting poems, no eulogies, and no national tears to be heard of (while the deaths of Jonson, Bacon, Raleigh, and Marlowe would receive lots of coverage). His will was four pages long and handwritten by an attorney, with no indication it was the will of a great writer, a man who supposedly invented 2,000 words, leaving no scrap of writing for his illiterate family.

What can be said with some certainty is that William Shakspur didn’t write the plays attributed to him. Now hold your breath, there’s way more.

Argument Two: Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare

The Promus

Bacon’s “Promus” notebook was published with his “Northumberland Papers” in the late 19th century, two documents that show an evolution of Shakespeare unlike anything else. Bacon’s Promus contains 1,655 metaphors, aphorisms, and gags written between 1594–1596, and hundreds of niche parallels to extracts of the Shakespeare plays written later.

The notebook includes phrases lifted from Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace, Terence, and the Catholic Bible in languages ranging from Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, to English, and at least 600 of Bacon’s phrases can be found in his known works, let alone the hundreds that would be found in Shakespeare over the following 30 years.

The Northumberland Papers

This ledger of papers include a collection of works belonging to two authors: Bacon and Shakespeare, written before they were published, in 1597 (before Shakespeare appeared on the title pages of any plays). Within, the phrase “By Mr. Ffrauncis William Shakespeare” is written with a page of signatures by the same hand, with multiple alternative spellings of the name “Shakespeare”, as if Bacon is testing out his pen name.

Bacon signs off with the symbol of Pallas Athena, the “Spear-shaker” and Muse of all Muses, and includes the titles “Richard I”, “Richard II”, excerpts from the “Rape of Lucrece”, and the famous word “honorificabilitudini” from “Love Labour’s Lost”. Unlike other works listed, the plays aren’t immediately attributed to any author, while another work included (the “Isle of Dogs” by Ben Jonson) explicitly names the author on the title page. This is the only Elizabethan document with both Bacon and Shakespeare’s names on.
“Richard I & II” were Shakespeare’s most treasonous plays, later used to encourage rebellion by the Earl of Essex in 1601. It was in the second quarto publication of Richard II in 1598 that the Shakespeare name was used in print for the first time (as “William Shake-speare”).
The words “put into type” are written on the back, referencing the writing practice Bacon held with his brother Anthony to publish writing, an explanation for why no handwritten Shakespeare plays have been attributed to him, for they were never circulated before being put into type.

The First Folio

The First Folio (1623) was published seven years after Shakespeare’s date of death, and collated while Ben Jonson lived in Francis Bacon’s residence in St Albans. It contained 18 plays printed for the first time — including new plays like “Henry VIII” — with nearly 5,000 new lines added to the plays previously released as quartos.

Bacon and Shakespeare’s combined works create an unbroken timeline of the monarchy across 16 kings from “King John” (1199) to “Henry VIII” (1547), without overlap. Furthermore, “Richard III” concludes at the battle of Bosworth Field. Bacon’s “Henry VII” commences with the song at the end of the battle.
Letters show Bacon was working on a “Henry VIII” history between 1620 and 1623, though no such work was published under Bacon’s name. Plays like “Henry VIII” contain information Bacon had privileged access to between 1618 and 1621 as Lord Chancellor to James I (particularly Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey’s materials).
In “Love Labour’s Lost”, the two councillors of the French king, Biron and Longueville, appear in the play. This information wasn’t publicly known at the time, but Bacon grew up in France’s clergy between 12 and 17, while Francis’ brother Anthony was present at the court during the years 1585–90, watching these events unfold first-hand.
Ben Jonson referred to Bacon in his eulogy as “he, who hath fill’d up all numbers; and perform’d that in our tongue, which may be compar’d, or preferr’d, either to insolent Greece, or haughty Rome”, comparing him to Homer and Virgil. This is the precise analogy he cast to Shakespeare in the First Folio, which Jonson never recycled in his writing otherwise.

The King James Bible

The First Folio (1623) and The King James Bible (1611) belong to the same pen, and Bacon left his mark on both.

In the First Folio, the name of Bacon and his closest friend, Tobie Matthew appear in the margin. Bacon has described Tobie as “another myself”, and it reads vertically: “F. BACON, TOBEY” and “TWO ALIKE” on multiple pages. Similarly, Bacon included his favourite two numbers (33 and 46), with the 46th word from the beginning and end spelling “shake” and “spear”.
“The Tempest” (1611) shows extensive biblical parallels as Shakespeare’s most biblical work, suggesting simultaneous work on both texts. After his fall from power in 1621, Bacon wrote a prayer with remarkable similarity in prose to KJV.
Bacon’s printer’s devices appear in both works, identical to works from “Venus and Adonis” (1592), to “Sylva Sylvarum” (1623).

Personal and Biographical Evidence

Bacon’s hometown of St Albans appears more than any other location in Shakespeare’s works (Stratford does not appear). Bacon’s brother, Antony/Antonio is the most common character across the 37 plays (after the common name John). Bacon’s lived experience is further aligned with his plays, e.g.:

In one of the first Shakespeare works “The Taming of the Shrew”, Bacon’s family and friends make up the cast: the central character “Petruccio” is Petruccio Ubaldini, Bacon’s family calligrapher of forty years. Bacon’s Aunt, Katherine Cooke Killigrew, is “Katherine”, the other lead, with her sister Bianca being Bacon’s mother, Lady Anne Bacon. Anthony, Bacon’s brother, appears as Petruccio’s father “Antonio”, and Nicholas and Nathaniel, Bacon’s elder half-brothers, are Petruccio’s servants.
“The Merchant of Venice” appears to dramatise Bacon’s financial crisis. In 1594, after his writing studio failed and he had spent all his money publishing various books, Bacon borrowed from a jewish man who subsequently had him sent to a sponging house. Just as in the play, his brother Anthony saves his brother, returns from his travels in Italy, mortgages his property, and borrows money from friends to clear Francis’ debts.
The earliest Shakespeare poem “Venus and Adonis” is openly dedicated to Henry, Earl of Southampton, with whom Bacon was having a love affair throughout the 1590s, living with him at Gray’s Inn. The authorship of this poem was attributed to Bacon at the time by John Marston and Joseph Hall, along with Shakespeare’s other poem “The Rape of Lucrece”, suggesting Bacon was using “a swain” as a mask for his authorship.
“The Two Gentlemen of Verona” features lines lifted verbatim from Bacon’s letter to King James, and Bacon’s closest friend Tobie Matthew indicates in his letters to Bacon that he is returning the work ”Measure for Measure” that Bacon had sent him. Another time, he alludes that Bacon wrote “Julius Caesar”.

The Good Pens Writing Studio

Anthony and Francis Bacon held together a writing studio they called ‘The Good Pens’ that included at various times many reputable poets and writers including Thomas Kyd (co-author of “Edward III”) and Christopher Marlowe (co-author of “Henry VI”), along with scribes that would print many of the early works of the English renaissance.

The practice worked covertly, publishing books under pseudonyms. The first 14 works of Shakespeare were published anonymously (before becoming pseudonymous), and “Henry VI” has been part attributed to the same writers employed by Bacon and Anthony in London at the time. ‘The Good Pens’ organised and directed ‘masques’ for the Royal Court, performing many Shakespeare plays for the first time, including “The Comedy of Errors” at Gray’s Inn (Bacon’s London residence) in winter 1594, for Elizabeth I.
The “Shake-speares Sonnets” were signed by the Gemini signature. Anthony was known to have written sonnets, but never published them under his own name. The Shakespeare monument, erected between 1616 and 1623 implies there were two sides of Shakespeare, one being the ‘mortal’ pupil, and the other being the ‘immortal’ teacher. This signature was the sign that Francis and Anthony Bacon used to symbolise their twin partnership under the ‘The Good Pens’.

Now we’ve visited the axioms of history, lets turn our attention to the incentives. Has this really eluded the mainstream for four hundred years long?

The Motivation of Shakespeare

Elizabethan England was a land of brutal censorship. There was little freedom of speech, especially for nobles, who would face a certain social stigma from their peers if they provided honest political commentary. The Master of the Revels and the dreaded Star Chamber had the power to imprison and torture any writer, and this happened to many of Bacon’s circle:

The playwright Thomas Kyd was essentially tortured to death.
Christopher Marlowe was facing torture when he was murdered in a brawl.
Playwrights Ben Jonson, Thomas Nashe, George Chapman, and John Marston were all temporarily imprisoned for their writings.

The Shakespeare plays were particularly controversial, and weaponised by enemies of Queen Elizabeth. The Earl of Essex sponsored a performance of Richard II in a plot to encourage rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I (and was shortly thereafter arrested and executed).

Bacon was intimately involved in this proceeding and others, given his legal training and relationship with the royal court. Essex may have been Bacon’s brother by blood. He had good reason to hide his identity so that the writer could denounce the current regime or certain political enemies without direct backlash.
In Richard II, the monarch is deposed, imprisoned and murdered. The play was written around 1595 but the ‘abdication scene’ was not printed in early editions, because of the parallels to the protestant Queen Elizabeth. King Richard had relied heavily on politically powerful favourites, as did Elizabeth, and she is reputed to have remarked, “I am Richard II, know ye not that?” upon viewing the play. For these reasons, Shakespeare’s commentary was published under a pseudonym until 1598, and no clear link formed to William Shakspur until after Elizabeth’s reign.

Bacon was considered a genius from a young age. He was well exposed to the royal household, growing up in the Cecil mansion on Strand from age 5 or 6, before a long period serving under the ambassador to France until seventeen.

Deliberately set out to stock his mind with all human learning ancient and modern, starting at a young age where one anecdote proclaimed he had read every book ever published by age 12 (back in 1573). One of his biographers remarked that, “the immensity of his genius has been a sole trial for his biographers.” As a teen, when he was painted by Elizabeth’s portrait artist, who inscribed “If only I could paint his mind!” beneath his image.
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), who wrote the first English Dictionary, said he could have written a dictionary from Bacon’s works alone. He was said to possesses an exceptional memory, and there are testimonies regarding his power of instant comprehension. Shakespeare has the habit of writing phrases with double and opposite meanings, which relates to Bacon’s philosophy of covering the front and back in time.
Goethe said Shakespeare “drew a sponge over all human knowledge”, which is apparent in his clinical understanding of all of the arts and sciences. Bacon is famous in his own right for pioneering the Baconian method, for formalising knowledge in a structured fashion, a philosophy he developed at a young age.

A More Interesting Tudor Era: The Extended Theory

Theory: Bacon and the Earl of Essex were Sons of Queen Elizabeth I

The story goes: in 1560, Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, were married in secret. Two years into her reign, Elizabeth got pregnant with Robert Dudley’s child, was housed for six months and gave birth to Francis, and the Bacon family adopted him as their own. Eight years later, the Act of Succession was rewritten to allow Elizabeth to select who the Crown would go to, rather than her heirs.

Bacon was raised by Elizabeth’s closest advisor, William Cecil, who would have been Bacon’s uncle, and as a young teenager was sent by the Queen to France to study under the French ambassador. At 17, the royal portrait artist Nicholas Hilliard painted just Bacon from his family, and just the Earl of Essex from his, and he refrained from painting anyone except royals. Nicholas Bacon left no money to Bacon in his will, unlike his adoptive brother Anthony.

At 23, Bacon would be made Member of Parliament for Portland, a royal borough, and lived on the royal dime. At 32, Bacon would be given Twickenham Park opposite the Queen’s Palace at Richmond, where he wrote Love Labour’s Lost and many great works. The Shakespeare author alludes to this many times. One such time is in Henry IV Part 1, where he modifies the common phrase “Tom, Dick, and Harry” to “Tom, Dick, and Francis.” This appears in Prince Henry’s dialogue, potentially linking the name Francis to the Prince of Wales — a position Bacon would have held if recognised as Elizabeth’s son.

Bacon would come to take the position of Queen Consort, a position made for him, as he rose to significance as Elizabeth’s closest advisor. After Elizabeth’s death, Bacon wrote to James I “I wish that I am the first, so I may be the last of sacrifices in your times,” and was subsequently knighted, given office, and promoted to Lord Chancellor in short succession, where he wore purple at his coronation — a colour saved specifically for royals.

Theory: Bacon Wrote Cervantes’ Don Quixote

The Shakespeare canon presents a remarkable literary map of Europe and the ancient world, covering the monarchy from King John through Henry VIII (if you include Bacon’s works), with definitive masterpieces set in various nations:

Macbeth for Scotland.
For Denmark, Hamlet.
Romeo and Juliet is Italy’s undying masterpiece.
Germany is captured in Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice.
France, England’s ally at the time, was central to Love Labour’s Lost and Henry V.
For Rome and Greece we have Julius Caesar and Troilus and Cressida, while A Midsummer Night’s Dream is set in a mythological Athens.
For Egypt there’s Antony and Cleopatra.

One leading European nation is conspicuous by its absence, perhaps due to their constant attacks against England during Elizabeth’s reign. Spain has no great political commentary, no great novel by Shakespeare, though perhaps Spain’s greatest piece of literature appeared in 1605 — Don Quixote.

Cervantes, the mysterious Spanish author, died on the exact same day as Shakespeare (according to the difference of ten days between Spanish and English calendars), and left no marked grave, no private letters, no manuscripts, no diaries, no will, no payments. He left nothing, and was not recognised for hundreds of years as a genius. The book was printed in Madrid, and was outcast for the complexity and style of writing, which reads distinctly Shakespearean.

The book also had a highly unusual structure — with its frame narrative, unreliable narrator, and repeated insistence on its own fictional nature — very much a departure from the literary conventions at the time. The hero is not a typical Spaniard, but rather a caricature of a Spaniard, which led audiences to be offended at the time. Over and over again in Don Quixote — 33 times in fact (Bacon’s favourite number) — we are told that the real author is an Arab historian, Hamet Benengeli. Hamet is one letter short of Hamlet; Ben is Hebrew for son, Engeli is an interpolation of England. There are also odd circumstances by which Don Quixiote was translated into English at a lightning pace.

Bibliography:

[1]

Reference 1

“One study on 1600 poets and playwrights.”

Shakespeare and Francis Bacon with Grok assist