The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship contends that Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, essayist and scientist, wrote the plays that are attributed to William Shakespeare. Various explanations are offered for this alleged subterfuge, most commonly that Bacon's rise to high office might have been hindered if it became known that he wrote plays for the public stage. The plays are credited to Shakespeare, who, supporters of the theory claim, was merely a front to shield the identity of Bacon. All but a few academic Shakespeare scholars reject the arguments for Bacon authorship, as well as those for all other alternative authors.
The theory was first put forth in the mid-nineteenth century, based on perceived correspondences between the philosophical ideas found in Bacon’s writings and the works of Shakespeare. Legal and autobiographical allusions and cryptographic ciphers and codes were later found in the plays and poems to buttress the theory. The Baconian theory gained popularity and attention in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The academic consensus is that Shakespeare wrote the works bearing his name. Supporters of Bacon continue to argue for his candidacy through organisations, books, newsletters, and websites.
Terminology
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) was an English scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician who served as Solicitor General in 1607, Attorney General in 1613 and Lord Chancellor in 1618. Those who subscribe to the theory that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works refer to themselves as "Baconians", while dubbing those who maintain the orthodox view that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote his own works "Stratfordians".
Baptised as "Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere" (William son of John Shakspere) on 26 April 1564, the traditionally accepted author's surname had several variant spellings during his lifetime, but his signature is most commonly spelled "Shakspere". Baconians often use "Shakspere"Caldecott: Our English Homer, p. 7. or "Shakespeare" for the glover's son and actor from Stratford, and "Shake-speare" for the author to avoid the assumption that the Stratford man wrote the works attributed to him.
History of Baconian theory A pamphlet entitled The Story of the Learned Pig (circa 1786) and alleged research by James Wilmot have been described by some as the earliest instances of the claim that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works, but the Wilmot research has been exposed as a forgery, and the pamphlet makes no direct reference to Bacon.James Shapiro, "Forgery on Forgery", TLS (26 March 2010), 14–15.
The idea was first proposed by Delia Bacon (no relation) in lectures and conversations with intellectuals in America and Britain. William Henry Smith was the first to publish the theory in a letter to Lord Ellesmere published in the form of a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays?Smith, William Henry. Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays?, a pamphlet-letter addressed to Lord Ellesmere (William Skeffington, 1856). Smith suggested that several letters to and from Francis Bacon hinted at his authorship. A year later, both Smith and Delia Bacon published books expounding the Baconian theory.Smith, William Henry: Bacon and Shakespeare: An Inquiry Touching Players, Playhouses, and Play-writers in the Days of Elizabeth (John Russell Smith, 1857).Bacon, Delia: The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded (1857); The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded. In Delia Bacon's 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-monarchical system of philosophy by secreting it in the text.
In 1867, in the library of Northumberland House, John Bruce happened upon a bundle of bound documents, some of whose sheets had been ripped away. It had comprised a number of Bacon's oratories and disquisitions, and had also apparently held copies of the plays Richard II and Richard III, The Isle of Dogs and Leicester's Commonwealth, but these had been removed. On the outer sheet was scrawled repeatedly the names of Bacon and Shakespeare along with the name of Thomas Nashe. There were several quotations from Shakespeare and a reference to the word Honorificabilitudinitatibus, which appears in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost and Nashe's Lenten Stuff. The Earl of Northumberland sent the bundle to James Spedding, who subsequently penned a thesis on the subject, with which was published a facsimile of the aforementioned cover. Spedding hazarded a 1592 date, making it possibly the earliest extant mention of Shakespeare.
After a diligent deciphering of the Elizabethan handwriting in Francis Bacon's notebook, known as the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, Constance Mary Fearon Pott (1833–1915) argued that a number of the ideas and figures of speech in Bacon's book could also be found in the Shakespeare plays. Pott founded the Francis Bacon Society in 1885 and published her Bacon-centered theory in 1891.Pott, Constance: Francis Bacon and His Secret Society (London, Sampson, Low and Marston: 1891); Sirbacon.org, Constance Pott. In this, Pott developed the view of W.F.C. Wigston,Wigston, W.F.C.: Bacon, Shakespeare and the Rosicrucians (1890). 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 rug to their work. William Comyns Beaumont also popularised the notion of Bacon's authorship.
Other Baconians ignored the esoteric following that the theory was attracting.Michell, John: Who Wrote Shakespeare (Thames and Hudson: 2000) pp. 258–59. Bacon's reason for publishing under a pseudonym was said to be his need to secure his high office, possibly in order to complete his "Great Instauration" project to reform the moral and intellectual culture of the nation. The argument is that Bacon intended to set up new institutes of experimentation to gather the data to which his inductive method could be applied. He needed high office to gain the requisite influence,Spedding, James: "Of the Interpretation of Nature" in Life and Letters of Francis Bacon, 1872). Bacon writes "I hoped that, if I rose to any place of honour in the state, I should have a larger command of industry and ability to help me in my work [...]." and being known as a dramatist, an allegedly low-class profession, would have impeded his prospects (see stigma of print). Realising that play-acting was used by the ancients "as a means of educating men's minds to virtue",Bacon, Francis: Advancement of Learning (1640), Book 2, p. xiii. and being "strongly addicted to the theatre"Pott; Pott: Did Francis Bacon Write "Shakespeare"?, p. 7. himself, he is claimed to have set out the otherwise-unpublished moral philosophical component of his Great Instauration project in the Shakespearean oeuvre. In this way, he could influence the nobility through dramatic performance with his observations on what constitutes "good" government.
By the end of the 19th century, Baconian theory had received support from a number of high-profile individuals. Mark Twain showed an inclination for it in his essay Is Shakespeare Dead?. Friedrich Nietzsche expressed interest in and gave credence to the Baconian theory in his writings. The German mathematician Georg Cantor believed that Shakespeare was Bacon. He eventually published two pamphlets supporting the theory in 1896 and 1897.Dauben, Joseph W. (1979), Georg Cantor: his mathematics and philosophy of the infinite, Boston: Harvard University Press, pp. 281–83. By 1900, leading Baconians were asserting that their cause would soon be won. In 1916 a judge in Chicago ruled in a civil trial that Bacon was the true author of the Shakespeare canon. However, this proved to be the heyday of the theory. A number of new candidates were proposed in the early 20th century, notably Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, dethroning Bacon as the sole alternative to Shakespeare. Furthermore, these and other alternative authorship theories failed to make any headway among academics.
Baconian cryptology In 1880 Ignatius L. Donnelly, a U.S. Congressman, science fiction author and Atlantis theorist, wrote The Great Cryptogram, in which he argued that Bacon revealed his authorship of the works by concealing secret ciphers in the text. This produced a plethora of late 19th-century Baconian theorising, which developed the theme that Bacon had hidden encoded messages in the plays.
Baconian theory developed a new twist in the writings of Orville Ward Owen and Elizabeth Wells Gallup. Owen's book Sir Francis Bacon's Cipher Story (1893–95) claimed to have discovered a secret history of the Elizabethan era hidden in cipher form in Bacon/Shakespeare's works. The most remarkable revelation was that Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth. According to Owen, Bacon revealed that Elizabeth was secretly married to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who fathered both Bacon himself and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the latter ruthlessly executed by his own mother in 1601.Helen Hackett, Shakespeare and Elizabeth: the meeting of two myths, Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 157–60 Bacon was the true heir to the throne of England, but had been excluded from his rightful place. This tragic life story was the secret hidden in the plays.
Elizabeth Wells Gallup developed Owen's views, arguing that a bi-literal cipher, which she had identified in the First Folio of Shakespeare's works, revealed concealed messages confirming that Bacon was the queen's son. This argument was taken up by several other writers, notably Alfred Dodd in Francis Bacon’s Personal Life Story (1910) and C.Y.C. Dawbarn in Uncrowned (1913).Michael Dobson & Nicola J. Watson, England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004, p. 136. In Dodd's account Bacon was a national redeemer, who, deprived of his ordained public role as monarch, instead performed a spiritual transformation of the nation in private though his work: "He was born for England, to set the land he loved on new lines, 'to be a Servant to Posterity'".Alfred Dodd, Francis Bacon's Personal Life Story, London: Rider, 1950, preface. In 1916 Gallup's financial backer George Fabyan was sued by film producer William Selig. He argued that Fabyan's advocacy of Bacon threatened the profits expected from a forthcoming film about Shakespeare. The judge determined that ciphers identified by Gallup proved that Francis Bacon was the author of the Shakespeare canon, awarding Fabyan $5,000 in damages.
Orville Ward Owen had such conviction of his own cipher method that, in 1909, he began excavating the bed of the River Wye, near Chepstow Castle, in the search of Bacon's original Shakespearean manuscripts. The project ended with his death in 1924. Nothing was found.
The American art collector Walter Conrad Arensberg (1878–1954) believed that Bacon had concealed messages in a variety of ciphers, relating to a secret history of the time and the esoteric secrets of the Rosicrucians, in the Shakespearean works. He published a variety of decipherments between 1922 and 1930, concluding finally that, although he had failed to find them, there certainly were concealed messages. He established the Francis Bacon Foundation in California in 1937 and left it his collection of Baconiana.