PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
  Wednesday, 10 June 2009
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First, consider what many others that have read closely both Bacon and Shakespeare have said (this is only a partial list, it could be more than twice as long):

In conversation he could assume the most different characters, and speak the language proper to each, with a facility which was perfectly natural.- David Mallet, Bacon biographer

In his book, "Francis Bacon, His Career and Thought" Fulton Anderson says certainly the Shakespeare works are not in Bacon's usual style. But we must remember, he adds, Bacon could write in many different styles at will. Anderson notes that when trying to bring Essex back into Elizabeth's favor Bacon had successfully composed feigned correspondence supposedly written by Essex and by Bacon's brother Anthony in which he imitated the styles of each perfectly. He even wrote letters to Elizabeth, says Anderson, at the bidding of Essex in exact imitation of the Earl. And when James succeeded to the throne after the death of Elizabeth, Bacon addressed a letter to James in exact imitation of the ponderous style of James.

"A high perfection, attainable only by use, and treating with every man in his respective profession, and what he was most vers'd in. So as I have heard him entertain a Country Lord in the proper terms relating to Hawks and Dogs. And at another time out-Cant a Loundon Chirurgeon (Surgeon). Thus he did not only learn himself, but gratifie such as taught himn; who looked upon their Callings as honoured through his Notice..." Francis Osborn, in his "Advice to a Son," writing of Bacon

"My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place, or honors: but I have and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages." --Ben Johnson

The fire, the wine, the men! and in the midst, Thou stands't as if some Mysterie thou didst! ---Ben Jonson 1620 addressing Bacon during a tribute on his 60th birthday

He who have filled up all numbers and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome...In short, within his view, and about his times , were all the wits born that could honor a language or help study. Now things daily fall; wits grow downward and eloquence grows backward, so that he may be named and stand as the mark and acme of our language. -- Ben Jonson

I am one of the many who have never been able to bring the life of William Shakespeare and the plays of Shakespeare within planetary space of each other. Are there any two things in the world more incongruous? Had the plays come down to us anonymously, had the labor of discovering the author been imposed upon after generations, I think we could have found no one of that day but Francis Bacon to whom to assign the crown. In this case it would have been resting now on his head by almost common consent.- Dr. W. H. Furness, the eminent American scholar in a letter to Nathaniel Holmes, Oct. 29, 1866

A Dictionary of the English language might be compiled from Bacon's works alone.- -- Samuel Jonson

The first time I heard Bacon mentioned as the possible author of the plays and poems, the idea lit up in my brain , and I felt certain that it could not have been the Mummer...... The moment it was suggested that Bacon had written them, I felt as many must have felt when they heard for the first time that the earth goes round the sun. Things began to get concentric again; hitherto they had all been eccentric. --George Moore in a Letter to R. L. Eagle

Among so many virtues that made this great man commendable, prudence, as the first of all the moral virtues, and that most necessary of those of his profession, was that which shone in him the most brightly. Never was there man who so loved equity, or so enthusiastically worked for the public good as he. Vanity, avarice, and ambition, vices that too often attach themselves to great honors, were to him quite unknown, and if he did a good action it was not from a desire of fame, but simply because he could not do otherwise. His good qualities were entirely pure, without being clouded by the admixture of any imperfections, and the passions that form usually the defects in great men in him only served to bring out his virtues.--Pierre Amboise, 1631

Thus it is easier to prove that if Shakspere wrote the literature we have an instance of a stupendous miracle than it is to prove that, although Bacon possessed all the qualifications , he might still have refrained from writing it. In the one case we should have to exercise that form of faith described as "believing what you know to be untrue," on the other there is no tax whatever upon one's faculty of credence.-- H. Crouch Batchelor from Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare

The wisdom displayed in Shakespeare is equal in profoundness to the great Lord Bacon's Novum Organum. -- Hazlitt

There is an understanding manifested in the construction of Shakespeare's plays equal to that in Bacon's Novum Organum -- Carlyle

The philosophical writings of Bacon are suffused and saturated with Shakespeare's thought. -- Gerald Massey

Surely the Essays must be numbered among the few books that deserve to be chewed and digested. Rarely shall you find so much meat, so admirably dressed and flavored, in so small a dish. Bacon abhors padding, and disdains to waste a word; he offers us infinite riches in a little phrase; each of these essays gives in a page or two the distilled subtlety of a master mind on a major issue of life. It is difficult to say whether the matter more excels; for here is language as supreme in prose as Shakespeare's is in verse. It is a style like sturdy Tacitus', compact yet polished; and indeed some of its conciseness is due to skillful adaptation of Latin idiom and phrase. But its wealth of metaphor is characteristically Elizabethan, and reflects the exuberance of the Renaissance; no man in English literature is so fertile in pregnant and pithy comparisons.--Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

Sir Walter Raleigh once spoke of him by way of comparison, "That the Earl of Salisbury was an excellent speaker, but no good penman; that the Earl of Northampton (the Lord Henry Howard) was an excellent penman, but no good speaker; but that Sir Francis Bacon was eminent in both."

I infer from this sample that Bacon had all the natural faculties which a poet wants; a fine ear for metre, a fine feeling for imaginative effect in words, and a vein of poetic passion....Truth is that Bacon was not without the fine phrensy of a poet. --James Spedding, "Works "

Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect. It is a strain which distends and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. He is the greatest philosopher-poet since Plato. -- Percy Shelley, the poet

I shall give you Measure for Measure.--Tobie Matthew in a letter to Bacon

He seems to have written his Essays with the pen of Shakespeare.--Alexander Smith

"It will go near to pose any other nation of Europe, to muster out in any age, four men, who in so many respects should excel four such as we are able to show them: Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Francis Bacon. The fourth was a creature of incomparable abilities of mind, of a sharp and catching apprehension, large and faithful memory, plentiful and sprouting, deep and solid judgment, for as such as might concern the understanding part. A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so eloquent, significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing, a way of words, of metaphors and allusions as, perhaps, the world hath not seen, since it was a world. I know this may seem a great hyperbole, and strange kind of excess of speech, but the best means of putting me to shame will be, for you to place any other man of yours by this of mine." - Tobie Mathew, friend of F. Bacon

It is my belief that Love's Labour's Lost took immediate inspiration from the Gray's Inn revels of 1594-5. It is very curious indeed to remember that the speeches of the Counsellors in Gesta Grayorum have been attributed to Francis Bacon, and if that attribution is correct, and if I am correct in hearing echoes of those speeches in Love's Labour's Lost, then the "civil war of wits" in that play may be, in one of its aspects, a reflection of some friendly crossing of swords between the two greatest wits of the age, Shakespeare and Bacon.--Frances Yates, a Stratfordian ; in the book A Study of Love's Labour's Lost

.......There has been a great deal of scholarship gone into both sides of this issue. One of the things that has convinced me the most is that those who believe in Shakespeare don't seem to have the same kind of knowledge of facts and the depth of perception. They're mostly denying Bacon because--well--most people don't think so, therefore it isn't true. Shakespeareans are very defensive , often very superficial in their treatment of what is put out by Baconians.---Arthur Young 1987 The Shakespeare/Bacon Controversy

With this, readers should at least begin to acknowledge that many others thought that Bacon is fully capable of writing in the style of Shakespeare.
14 years ago
·
#2753
Part 2 of 4 on Summary Authorship Evidence in Love's Labour's Lost

Point 3) The play uses historical incidents within Bacon's, but not Shakspere's known experience and awareness.

The Arden editor said that "Shakespeare's play follows historical fact remarkably closely." The parallels are:

(a) The Academy. An actual academy, like that in the play, was set up at the Court of Navarre by Henri. There is also a letter from 1583 by the English Ambassador to Sir Francis Walsingham, one of Queen Elizabeth's Secretaries of State, that the King of Navarre "has furnished his Court with principal gentlemen of the Religion and reformed his house", which also is found echoed in the play.

(b) in the play, an embassy of women come from the French court to King of Navarre's academy. In actual history, there were two such embassies, though the characters are slightly different. For instance, a princess is used in the play rather than the sister of the King of France. But in each there were negotiations over money and over the region of Aquitaine.

(c) the historical embassy was led by Marguerite de Valois, and her journey corresponds exactly with the princess's journey in the play. For instance, both real and play embassies visited the Duc d'Alencon at his residence, and they both also visited Brabant/Flanders. In addition the Alencon family dies out before 1589, before the likely writing of the play, but after Bacon's time in France. So, again, these particular correspondences between the play and history were much more likely to be known by Francis Bacon, who had a deep interest in Academies and whose brother Anthony lived with the King of Navarre at his court in the summer of 1584, and who later resided some years with Francis after his return to England. (Anthony Bacon had spent 12 years living on the continent and was a great resource of information and communication to him regarding European events and contacts.)

(d) The French surnames in the play for the three young lords (Berowne, Longaville, and Dumain) are nearly exactly those of real persons--(Duc de Biron, Duc de Longueville, and Duc de Mayenne). These characters in the play don't reflect the personalities of the actual historical persons, and the names themselves would have been known to many in England that followed events in France. However, they would be more easily known to Francis and Anthony Bacon due to their years spent in France and their associations with various personages there. In addition, Anthony Bacon personally knew the Duc de Longueville (like Longaville in the play). And one of his servants had passports in which were found the names of a de Lomagne (similar to Dumain) and a Baron de Biron (similar to Berowne). Antonio Perez, the Spanish braggart onetime friend of the Bacons, had also for a time been a companion of Henri of Navarre.

(e) The play refers to King of Navarre's manner of horse riding. "Was that the King, that spurred his horse so hard / Against the steep-up rising of the hill?" (4.1.1-2) The real King Henri of Navarre actually did have a habit of riding impetuously. The Bacon brothers would have known this.

(f) The play also has the princess say

"Nothing but this! yes; as much love in rhyme
As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper,
Writ o' both sides the leaf, margent and all,
That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name." (5.2.6-9)

Henri, the real King of Navarre, actually did cover the whole sheet, including margins, in his love letters, and he did seal them with romantic "special emblematic signet".

(g) In the play the princess has an interest in hunting. Her historical counterpart Margurite had hunting as a favorite pastime.

The above facts were mostly not published in Shakspere's lifetime. There had been a book on The French Academy published in English in 1586 but Bacon would be much more likely to have read it out of his consuming interest in academies, than would have Will Shakspere. Nor does the book mention such an academy at the court of Navarre. Casual chats with travelers would not likely be a source for all these personal and peculiar historical facts represented in the play. And I've only described maybe half of them listed by Cockburn.

Point 4) At the end of the play the Princess has to leave due to the sudden death of her father. A more appropriate ending would have had her complete the business that she had planned and could also then have had a happy ending, as usual for a comedy. Nor was the princess' father hardly mentioned in the play, last hear about early in act 2. Plus, the historical father, Henry II, died many years before in 1559. But it so happens that Francis Bacon's own father had died on February 20, 1579 while he was in France (and while the historical Marguerite was on her embassy visit to Navarre) and this caused Francis' time on the continent to abruptly end as he then had to return to England. This would seem a perfect explanation for the similar ending in the play.

There are two other important points of evidence that I'll deal with in separate posts following this.

[end of Part 2 of 4]
14 years ago
·
#2754
[Part 3 of 4] Summary Authorship Evidence in Love's Labor's Lost

Parallels between Love's Labor's Lost (L.L.L) and Gray's Inn Revels of 1594-5

I summarized in earlier posts how The Comedy of Errors was integrated into these revels at Bacon's law school. Shake-Speare's 'L.L.L' also has strong connections to these same Revels.

(a) In the Revels there were rules given for the students to read, one of which was to read a book on "The French Academy", again, one of Francis Bacon's fascinations.

(b) One of the themes of the play was the rival merits of Love versus Play. This was also a theme in the Revels, as would be natural for a law school. Among the speeches ascribed to Bacon is one that advocates the study of philosophy, and another that advocates the pursuit of pastimes and sport including love. And as in the play, so in the Revels is there a temporary abandonment of study for the pleasure of revelry. And in another speech in the Revels, a counsellor says "What! Nothing but tasks, nothing but working-days? No feasting, no music, no dancing, no triumphs, no comedies, no love, no ladies? Let other men's lives be as pilgrimages, but Princes' lives are as Progresses [royal visits] dedicated only to variety and solace." Compare the similarity of this speech to that in 'L L L' by Berowne "O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,/ Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep".

(c) In 'L L L' the characters disguise themselves as 'Muscovites' and 'blackamoors'. Likewise, in the Revels, there are characters playing 'Russians' and 'Negro Tartars'.

(d) In the play Rosaline mocks the King as looking "Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy". In the Revels, a character supposedly returning from Russia describes himself as having seasickness. From correspondences like these, the Stratfordian Francis Yates even observed that "It is my belief...that Love's Labor's Lost ... took immediate inspiration from the Gray's Inn Revels of 1594-5". So the question is asked - How could Shakspere be so familiar with all the minute details and speeches of the Revels, and then to be so motivated to add them to his plays, especially considering it's very unlikely he could have even attended them?

Francis Yates also wrote "It is very curious indeed to remember that the speeches of the Counselors in Gesta Grayorum have been attributed to Francis Bacon, and if that attribution is correct, and if i am also correct in hearing echoes of those speeches in Love's Labor's Lost, then the "civil war of wits" in that play may be, in one of its aspects, a reflection of some friendly crossing of swords between the two greatest wits of the age, Shakespeare and Bacon". If only he had been aware of all the current evidence for Bacon's authorship of both, the curiosity would be much less surprising.
14 years ago
·
#2755
Part 4 of 4 on Summary Authorship Evidence in Love's Labor's Lost

Finally, there's a connection between a part of the play (LLL) with another French historical fact, and with the play of Hamlet.

In LLL, 5.2.1-9 there is this passage:

Rosaline: That was the way to make his godhead wax;
For he hath been five thousand year a boy.
Katharie: Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.
Rosaline: You'll ne'er be friends with him: a' killed your sister.
Katharine: He made her melancholy, sad and heavy;
And so she died.

There is a strong historical parallel of this in French history, and Francis Bacon was perfectly positioned to hear of it. It almost certainly refers to the daughter of Marguerite's principal Lady-in-waiting. The daughter was Helene de Tournon and she died at Liege in 1577. Marguerite, again, was the sister of the French King Henry III (not to be confused with Henri, King of Navarre, who lived at the same time as the French King Henry, and who took his place as King of France when Henry III died).

Helene de Tournon had fallen in love with a young nobelman, the Marquis of Varembon, while living in Flanders. She later returned to Paris. When the King's sister Marguerite planned to visit Flanders in the summer of 1577, Helene was happy to go along in hopes of again seeing the Marquis of Varembon. When they met again in Flanders the Marquis treated her with indifference. And when he departed on a trip without acknowledging her at all it seems, she became "so stricken that she could only breathe by crying out for mortal pain." She died at Liege 8-9 days later. The cause of death attributed to spasms of the heart. Then the Marquis, having second thoughts of his treatment of her, returned to Liege to apologize. On his arrival he met Helene's funeral cortege and asking whose funeral it was, he was told, then was said to have swooned and fell from his horse.

The Arden editor of 'LLL' wrote that "It is highly probable that this incident suggested not only the decline of Katharine's sister (in the play) but the story of Ophelia in Hamlet". Remember that Hamlet only learned of Ophelia's death when he met her funeral cortege by chance. So how many noblemen first learn of the death of a girl friend by encountering her funeral cortege by chance. Both women were members of royal court, in love with a great nobleman, both facing opposition to such a relationship (the Marquis's family had other plans for him). Both had their hearts broken over overt indifference of their beloved, both of whom relented too late. And as Hamlet had jumped into Ophelia's grave, the soul of the Marquis was said to have gone down into the grave afterward.

Again, Francis Bacon was in France when this historical event occurred and which had likely been a topic of conversation. He may even heard of it directly from Marguerite. Would Will Shakspere, though, some 20 years later, have known about it? The odds are very low for this.
14 years ago
·
#2756
Julius Caesar Part 1 of 3

There are some tell-tale parallels between this play and Bacon works. Both our authors felt great, though qualified, admiration for Caesar. Shake-Speare's is obvious from his play. Bacon wrote a Character of Caesar and in his The Advancement of Learning called him "the most excellent spirit (his ambition reserved) of the world", and said that Caesar's history, letters and Apothegms "excel all men's else".

Shake-Speare:
Julius Caesar 1.2.217-51

CASCA. Why, there was a crown offered him, and being offered him,
he put it by with the back of his hand, thus, and then the
people fell as shouting.
BRUTUS. What was the second noise for?
CASCA. Why, for that too.
CASSIUS. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?
CASCA. Why, for that too.
BRUTUS. Was the crown offered him thrice?
CASCA. Ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every time gentler
than other, and at every putting by mine honest neighbors
shouted.
CASSIUS. Who offered him the crown?
CASCA. Why, Antony.
BRUTUS. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.
CASCA. I can as well be hang'd as tell the manner of it. It was
mere foolery
; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a
crown (yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these
coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once. But for all
that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered
it to him again; then he put it by again. But, to my thinking, he
was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it
the third time; he put it the third time by; and still as he
refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands
and threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of
stinking breath
because Caesar refused the crown that it had
almost choked Caesar
, for he swounded and fell down at it. And
for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips
and receiving the bad air.

CASSIUS. But, soft, I pray you, what, did Caesars wound?
CASCA. He fell down in the marketplace and foamed at mouth and was
speechless.
BRUTUS. 'Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.
CASSIUS. No, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.

Let us first compare some of the above with a passage from Bacon's The Advancement of Learning. Bacon there gives three examples of Caesar's felicity of speech. He starts the first example: "As, first, it is reason to be thought a master of words, that could with one word appease a mutiny in his army, which was thus:".

Compare to Shake-Speare:

ANTONY. But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world.

Act 3.Scene2

Bacon then relates the incident and what Caesar said, and comes to the second example:

"The second speech was thus: Caesar did extremely affect the name of king; and some were set on as he passed by in popular acclamation to salute him king whereupon, finding the cry weak and poor, he put if off thus, in a kind of jest, as if they had mistaken his surname; Non Rex sum, sed Caesar...for Rex was a surname with the Romans, as well as King is with us".

Shake-Speare's source for the play was North's translation of Plutarch. But on two points the accounts of both Shake-Speare and Bacon resemble each other, while differing from north's:

a) North: "Caesar refused it"
Bacon: "He put it off thus"
Shake-Speare: "He put it by with the back of his hand, thus...he put it by thrice...at every putting by...he put it by once...he put it by again."

b) Bacon: "In a kind of jest"
Shake-Speare: "It was mere foolery"
North says nothing about Caesar refusing the crown in a jesting manner.

One could sit 100 people down to write independent accounts based on North of the offer of the crown to Caesar, and it is doubtful whether one of them would say "he put it by" or "he put it off"; and almost certainly not one would say he put it by or off "thus". In the Bacon passage the two uses of "thus" preface apt remarks made by Caesar. But in the Shake-Speare line "thus" must relate to a gesture to be made by the actor playing Casca to reflect Caesar's rejection of the crown. If Bacon was Shake-Speare, he probably already had in mind when he wrote the play in 1599 what later appears in the Advancement (written about 1604), namely, "He put it off thus...Non Rex sum, sed Caesar [my name is not Rex, but Caesar]". But he made three changes for the play. (1) he dropped the Latin name joke (Rex/Caesar), probably as unsuited to the public Theatre; (2) he changed "he put it by" to "he put it off; (3) he retained "thus" but related it to a physical gesture, not to a remark. This last change explains the second - "put it off" (ie. parried it) is better suited to a remark, "put it by" (ie. waved the crown aside) better suited to a gesture. It seems that the collocation of "put it by" with "thus" still lingered in Bacon's mind years later as he used them together again for another purpose. These little quirks of phraseology can be a fingerprint of authorship evidence.

end of part 1 of 3
14 years ago
·
#2757
Julius Caesar Part 2 of 3

Now let us look at the latter part of the quote from the play mentioned in the previous post:

CASCA. ... and still as he
refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands
and threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of
stinking breath
because Caesar refused the crown that it had
almost choked Caesar, for he swounded and fell down at it. And
for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips
and receiving the bad air.

CASSIUS. But, soft, I pray you, what, did Caesars wound?
CASCA. He fell down in the marketplace and foamed at mouth and was
speechless.
BRUTUS. 'Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.
CASSIUS. No, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.

Caesar was known to be an epileptic ("the falling sickness";), but there is no historical source for his fainting when offered the crown. But Shake-Speare makes him swoon owing to the "stinking breath" of the mob. This was Bacon's eccentric theory that epilepsy was caused by gross vapours entering the cells of the brain.
In his Natural History he wrote:

"It hath long been received and confirmed by divers trials that the root of the male peony dried, tied to the neck, doth help the falling sickness; and likewise the incubus which we call the mare. The cause of both these diseases, and especially of the epilepsy from the stomach, is the grossness of the vpours which rise and enter into the cells of the brain".

And Bacon thought that the smells which were most harmful were human smells. In the same work he wrote:

"If such smells be made by art and by the hand, they consist chiefly of man's flesh or sweat putrified; for they are not those stinks which the nostrils straight abhor and expel that are most perniciious but such airs as have some similitude with man's body, and so insinuate themselves and betray the spirits. There may be great danger in using such compositions in great meetings of people within houses, as in churches, at arraignments, at plays and solemnities and the like. And these empoisonments of air are the more dangerous in meetings of people, because the much breath of people doth further the infection. Therefore, when any such thing is feared, it were good those public places were perfumed before the assemblies"

Shake-Speare's "such a deal of stinking breath" corresponds to Bacon's "the much breath of people". And Shake-Speare has "sweaty" and "stinking" while Bacon uses "sweat" and "stinks". and Casca's "for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air" is echoed by Bacon's observation that breath "doth further the infection".

end of part 2 of 3
14 years ago
·
#2758
Julius Caesar part 3 of 3

Some other parallels in this play

Decius [Brutus]: Shall no man else be touched but only Caesar?
Cassius: Decius, well urged. I think it is no meet
Mark Antony, so well belov'd of Caesar,
Should outlive Caesar.
Julius Caesar 2.1.154-7

Compare to Bacon's Essay on Friendship:

"And it seemeth [Decius Brutus's] favour was so great...As if he had enchanted Caesar...The like or more [friendship] was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus...[Severus] did write also in a letter to the Senate, by these words: "I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me".

It seems (though scholars have missed this point) that Shake-Speare had Severus's letter in mind when he wrote the lines above, though he applies the dictum to Antony and Caesar and ironically treats Caesar's love as a reason why Antony should not outlive him.

--------------------------------------------

Caesar is told that the augurs warn that he should not go forth that day,
but he dismissed them with contempt. Calphurnia pleads with him:

"Alas, my lord,
Your wisdom is consumed in confidence.
Do not go forth today".
Julius Caesar 2.2.37-50

Bacon, alluding to this matter in his Latin De Augmentis says: "This extemity of confidence is ever as unlucky as unhallowed". The word "confidence" (or its Latin equivalent), used by both Shake-Speare and Bacon in the context, does not derive from Shake-Speare's source, North's Plutarch.

---------------------------------------------

Antony (of Caesar's death): "Here wast thou bay'd brave hart,
Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,
...
How like a deer, strucken by many princes,
Dost thou like here"!
Julius Caesar 3.1.204-5 and 209-210

This "stag at bay" metaphor is not in Plutarch or North (who merely say that Caesar was hacked and mangled as a wild beast taken by hunters), nor in Suetonius or any other source. But it is in Bacon who, describing Caesar's murder in his speech on Fortitude in his Conference of Pleasure, p. 8, to present before the Queen in 1595, said:

"They came about him unarmed, and as a stag at bay".

---------------------------------------------

Antony (of Caesar): "the noblest man / That ever lived"
Julius Caesar 3.1.256-7

Bacon (of Caesar): "the worthiest man that ever lived"
Speech on Fortitude in Conference of Pleasure, p. 7

The Stratfordians seem unaware of all these Bacon/Shake-Speare parallels about Caesar. Shake-Speare could not have borrowed from Bacon, since none of the latter's works in question had been published when the play was written. And Bacon could not have borrowed from the play which was not published till 1623, except possibly for the Natural History items (but Bacon would not take his theory of epilepsy from a playwright), or unless he had seen an early performance of the play and remembered even its minutiae of phraseology. Realistically, mutual borrowing is out of the question as an explanation of these parallels.

end of part 3
14 years ago
·
#2759
more misc. parallels

From Troilus And Cressida 1.2.152-4

Pandarus: [Hector laughed at] the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus' chin.
Cressida: And't had been a green hair I should have laughed too.

Bacon: "Aristotle giveth the cause, vainly, why the feathers of birds are of more lively colours than the hair of beasts; for no beast hath any fine azure, or carnation, or green hair. He saith it is because birds are more in the beams of the sun than beasts; but that is manifestly untrue;"

Comment: The Arden editor notes on green: "A color normally associated (as now) with inexperience". But Shake-Speare was erudite, and it has been rightly said that, in seeking an explanation of a difficult Shake-Speare line, one is wise to look first to classical sources. So when one finds a specific reference to green hair in Aristotle (De Coloribus 6), it is fairly safe bet that it was that which prompted Shake-Speare to color Troilus' white hair. But in choosing green rather than azure or carnation, he may have been influenced by Troilus' inexperience.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from Coriolanus 3.1.261-3

"Where is this viper
That would depopulate the city and
Be every man himself?"

Bacon: "For enclosure of grounds brings depopulation...so instead of a whole town full of people, none but green fields, but "shepherd and a dog"...A sharp and vigorous law had need to be made against these viperous natures who fulfill the proverb Si non posse quod vult, velle tamen quod potest [from Ovid]".
Speech against Enclosures

Comment: Thus both our authors rather oddly associate vipers with depopulation. Vipers were believed to eat their way at birth through their mother's bowels, but this has no resemblance to someone depopulating a city or anything else.
14 years ago
·
#2760
Here is a Bacon/Shake-Speare parallel from

Henry IV, 3.1.82-5

First Shake-Speare:

"... a man may prophesy
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured".


Now Bacon: "Nay more, Mr. Speaker, whosoever shall look into the seminary (from seminarium = seed plot] and beginnings of the monarchies of the world, he shall find them founded in poverty".
Speech on union with Scotland

"Also that it may be a beginning and seed...of a Holy War against the Turk.
Instruction to Sir John Digby

"None of the great monarchies, which in the memory of times have risen in the habitable world, had so fair seeds and beginnings.
Dedication to King James of a Essay on the True Greatness of Britain

Comment: The only parallel given by J.M.Robertson in The Baconian Heresy is: "So they have their beginnings of themselves in seed, in flower or in kernel", from an Arthur Golding work. Of course the concept of beginning in seed was a commonplace, but the almost tautologous coupling of "beginning" and "seed" (in one passage "seminary";) looks like a Bacon and Shake-Speare mannerism. The sense required Golding to use both "beginnings" and "seed", but Bacon and Shake-Speare could each time have said either "seed" or "beginning".
14 years ago
·
#2761
The Ducdame parallel

from Shake-Speare's As You Like It 2.5.47-56

Jacques sings or speaks the following song:

If it do come to pass
That any many turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame,
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
And if he will come to me.

The text continues:

Amiens: What's that "ducdame"?
Jacques: 'Tis a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle.


now Bacon: "It is a matter of common discourse of the chain of sciences how they are linked together, inasmuch as the Grecians, who had terms at will, fitted it of a name of Circle learning".
Valerius Terminus or Of the Interpretation of Nature

Comment: Jacque's answer has bemused editors to this day. To analyze some of the points, "ducdame" may be Gaelic for "Come to me". The conjunction of "Greek" and "fools" suggests that Shake-Speare may have had in mind the expression "foolish Greek" which he used in Twelfth Night 4.1.18 as slang for "silly merry-maker". "Merry Greek" was a familiar expression. But why does Jacques call the foolish Greeks into a "circle"? The Arden As You Like It editor thinks that Jacques may refer to the safe circle of Arden into which the Duke and his followers have retreated. More plausibly, she continues: "In stage performance the people to whom he is speaking often gather round him [Jacques], lured by his mysterious and portentious manner, only to break up in some discomfiture, as they realize that they have literally been drawn into a circle, and thus, in the manner of a playground joke, proved fools". Despite this possible explanation, I think it likely that Shake-Speare had (or had also) in mind the Greek Circle learning mentioned in the Bacon text (of which editors seem unaware). So erudite was Shake-Speare that if he thought of "Greek" and "circle", he would at once think of Greek Circle learning. Line 56 is then an ironic reference to that learning - instead of learned Greeks in a circle, there were "foolish Greeks" in a circle. Will Shakespere, incidentally, would hardly have made this connection. Shake-Speare cannot have derived Greek Circle learning from Valerious Terminus which was written later than the play.
14 years ago
·
#2762
With this post I'm beginning another short series of parallel ideas and phrases between Shake-Speare and Bacon. These Bacon writings are from his Promus notebook, the same from which the posts on Romeo and Juliet came from. The distinction that these Bacon entries have is that they all seem to have been devised by himself, rather than jotted down from another source.

-----------------------------------

1. from Bacon's Promus (entry 81) (and repeated in entry 1403).

"Mineral wits strong poison if they be not corrected".

Now Shake-Speare:

Othello 2.1.290-2 & 3.3.330-4

Iago: For that I do suspect the lustful Moor
Hath leap'd into my seat, the thought whereof
Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards
..............................
The Moor already changes with my poison;
Dangerous conceits are in their nature poisons
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste
But with a little act upon the blood,
Burn like the mines of sulphur

Comment: I think Bacon meant the same as Iago; namely, that if you plant a disturbing thought in someone's mind, it will undermine him like a mineral poison. Bacon's "wits" must mean "thoughts".

----------------------------------------------

On a side note, my postings of Baconian evidence were censored for most of a day by some Stratfordians elsewhere. That is, of all the many topics and posters, only mine were locked and unable to be read. Eventually they backed off on the censorship. Now it seems they will go back to ignoring it. If the interest in Shake-Speare is really about the Shake-Speare writings -- "The Play's the thing" -- then Shakespeare enthusiasts should be disinterested in who the author (or authors) actually was (or were). What we should want is a better understanding and appreciation of the ideas and language. However, if the authorship debates/forums or what have you, are really just a battlefield for cultural power and hegemony, then it becomes another Idol of the Theater, as Bacon would say, and barren of merit.

http://www.sirbacon.org/links/4idols.htm
14 years ago
·
#2763
More from Bacon's Promus (notebook).

2. Promus entry 198

"Hear me out. [As repartee] You were never in [i.e. "you were never saying anything pertinent"]

now from Shake-Speare:

Love's Labour's Lost 4.1.136:

"And if my hand be out [at archery], then belike your hand is in [with Rosaline].


Comment: The young courtiers are engaging in banter and double meanings about Rosaline. The Promus entry is one of a number of pieces of repartee devised by Bacon. In this one A says "Hear me out", and B snaps back "You were never in". The Shake-Speare line is likewise repartee based on "in" and "out", though in a different context. This is quoted along with two more in the next two examples of additional repartee by Bacon to show how similar they are in style to Shake-Speare's repartee. Bacon could not have used such repartee in his prose works - only in private conversation and / or in plays.

-----------------------------------------

3. Promus entry 200

"You go from the matter [As repartee] but it was to follow you [i.e. in effect "It was you who go from the matter"]


Then in All's Well That Ends Well 2.1.98

"Now, fair one, does your business follow us? [i.e. what is your business?"]

Comment: These references to "the matter" or "business" "following" a person seem odd terminology in their contexts.

------------------------------------------

Promus entry 204

"You take more than is granted [As repartee] You grant less than is proved".


now from Richard II, 3.3.15-7

Bolingbroke: Mistake not uncle, further than you should.
York: Take not good cousin, further than you should,
Lest you mistake

and from The Tempest, 2.1.20-1

Gonzalo: You have spoken truer than you purpos'd.
Sebastian: You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should.

Comment: Very similar types of repartee.
14 years ago
·
#2764
Promos more - ice and ignorance

5. Bacon's Promus entry 828

"Puer glaciem" "A boy [playing with] ice"; [from Adagia]

and then in Shake-Speare:
All's Well That Ends Well 2.3.93

"These boys are boys of ice; they'll none have her".

Comment: According to Mrs. Pott, puer glaciem was "said of those who, though they cannot keep a certain thing, are unwilling to part with it"; e.g. boys who are reluctant to come in from the ice. It looks as though Shake-Speare had the Latin tag in mind, but here makes it mean that they are frigid boys with no interest in Helena. Thus he ironically inverts the usual meaning - instead of the boys wanting something, they do not want it. Editors seem to have missed this Adagia echo.

------------------------------------------------------------

6. Bacon's Promus entry 948 [I think these had been posted earlier but they're a good reread]

"Better unborn than untaught" [from Heywood's Proverbs L.603]


2 Henry VI, 4.2.161
"O gross and miserable ignorance!"

and 4.7.70-1
"ignorance is the curse of God;
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven,"

Love's Labour's Lost 4.2.23
"O! thou monster Ignorance"

King John 4.2.59
"Barbarous ignorance"

Twelfth Night 4.2.43-4
"There is no darkness but ignorance"

Troilus And Cressida 2.3.28-9
"The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance"

Othello 3.3.410-11
"....and fools as gross
As ignorance made drunk"

Comment: There are many other statements in Bacon's works on the supreme importance of knowledge. It was his passionate and life-long creed. And Shake-Speare seems to have shared it, probably more than other Elizabethan playwrights.
14 years ago
·
#2765
7. Bacon's Promus entry 1391

"He will never do his tricks clean"


Troilus And Cressida 5.2.23-4

Cressida: what would you have me do?
Thersites: A juggling trick: to be secretly open.

Comment: The Arden editor paraphrases Thersites's line as a "deception [to be] privately public (or some such impossibility)". Bacon's line and Shake-Speare's are deliberate and almost identical paradoxes - a trick is by definition dirty, and a juggling trick by definition secret.

------------------------------------------------------------------

8. Bacon's Promus entry 1401

"It is not the first untruth i have heard reported. It is not the first truth I have heard denied"


Measure for Measure 5.1.68-70

"Let your reason serve
To make the truth appear where it seems hid,
And hide the false [which] seems true”.

Comment: This makes the same rather fine distinction as Bacon between falsehood and suppression of truth.
14 years ago
·
#2766
9. From Bacon's Promus (entry 1422)
(as it was found - not counting the quote marks)

"Removing (Remuant"


Then we find in Shake-Speare's Sonnet 116:


"....love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove".


Comment: In Bacon's Promus entry "Removing" means "changing"; and "Remuant" was a French word meaning "restless", and Bacon evidently Englished it as "removing" which thus means the same. This explains the Sonnet's line "Or bends with the remover to remove", which thus means "Or changes when it finds some change in the loved one". The O.E.D. defines this meaning of "remover" as "One who changes his place, a restless or stirring person; rare". It cites only two instances. One is the Sonnet line. The other is Bacon's Essay on Fortune which says: "An hasty fortune maketh an Enterpriser and Remover (the French hath it better: Entreprenant or Remuant): but the exercised fortune maketh the able man". In short, it looks as though Bacon in his notebook may have coined the word "remover" in the sense in question, and then Shake-Speare used it in his Sonnet which was probably written about the same period, the mid 1590's. Even if "remover" in this sense was not unique to our two authors, it was certainly rare.
14 years ago
·
#2767
10. From Bacon's Promus (entry 1430)

"It may well be the last for it hath lasted well"


Then in Love's Labour's Lost 1.1.159 we find:

"I am the last that will last keep his oath".

Comment: Exactly the same pun on "last" in sequence and "last" in duration.

------------------------------------------------

11. From Bacon's Promus (entry 1431)

"Those are great with you that are great by you"


Then in I Henry IV, 1.3.10-13

"Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves
The scourge of greatness to be used on it;
And that same greatness, too, which our own hands
Have holp to make so portly".

Comment: The Promus entry means: "Those are oppressive towards you whom you yourself have raised to eminence". And this is exactly the complaint in Shake-Speare's lines.

-------------------------------------------------

12. Bacon's Promus (entry 634)

"to play to be prophet"


and then in King Lear 5.3.72

"Jesters do oft prove prophets".

Comment: Both lines mean the same.
14 years ago
·
#2768
Bacon's quality as a poet

One of the arguments against the idea of Bacon as Shake-Speare is that “he couldn’t write good poetry” or at least “not as good as Shake-Speare”. Often these critics will point at his Psalm translations as evidence. This post is just to address his quality as a poet. Bacon's translations of some of the Psalms, were published just before he died, and written, as the preface states, from his sick-bed, over 30 years since the major Shake-Speare poems, and an unknown time after the Sonnets were completed. Translating sacred literature into rhyming metrical English verse is no easy task. John Milton also turned his hand to attempting the same thing with the Psalms, and his results are certainly in no way superior to Bacon's. But as to whether or not these have any quality as poetry, let's move past bias. Please read the following passage from Jean Overturn Fuller's biography of Francis Bacon:

"Sir Sidney Lee, who was a Stratfordian, but neither a poet nor a poetry critic, asserted that Bacon's "effort to write verse" (that is in the translations) sufficiently proved him incapable of having written poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Whilst I, as, in a modest way, a poet, made quite a different estimation, I might, as a Baconian, be taxed with bias, in a sense opposite to Lee's. What was therefore needed was a critic who would judge Bacon's verse without knowing whose it was; a witness unawares. I sent two samples, including the above, to Mr. Martin Booth, poet, winner of a number of poetry prizes, poetry critic for the Times Literary Supplement, Times Educational Supplement, Poetry Review etc and publisher of modern poetry from his Sceptre Press. Except that I told him the enclosed verse translations were not by myself, I gave him no clue as to the authorship, but asked him whether he would take them for the work of a scholar who had written practically no verse except for the enclosed, or a part of the work of a major poet. Mr. Booth replied:

"The mastery of subtle techniques, usually lacking in the "initiate" (ie the amateur poet), are present here. Structure tight and controlled, neat, subtle and forceful, using the poetic imagination to express the original, also the use of imagery. If it was a modern, I'd say the person had written little because of the cliché imagery, but if the person is pre-Eliot, then - yes. They must either have written other verse and destroyed it. Has read very widely. Too good for a non-poet. A poetically knowledgeable person. The work of a poet who has written...has impulsive sense of the intention of the original writer. No awful jarring smashes at the literary face that occur in premature writing tightly controlled: metre firm, seldom fails if at all; Rhyme good if a little old-fashioned, and rhythm very good. So, who is it?"
14 years ago
·
#2769
The Bosphorus

Will Shaksper is stated to have died on the 23rd April, 1616. The same year George Sandys published Journey, in which, referring to the Pontic sea, he says: "This sea is ....much annoyed with ice in the winter. The Bosphorus setteth with a strong current into Propontis."

Is it a coincidence that in the play of Othello in the First Folio, we find almost the same words? They read:

"Like to the Pontic sea whose icy current
.....keeps due on to the Propontic?'

Act 3, Scene 3.

These words could not have been used by Will Shaksper, who had died shortly after Sandy's book was published. They do not appear in the play of Othello, published in quarto in 1622 and first appeared in The First Folio of 1623.

Is it also a coincidence that the two seas east and west of the Bosphorus are mentioned under similar names both by "Shakespeare" and Bacon--Shakespeare calling them "Pontic and Propontic," and Bacon in his treatise entitled "De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris," calling them "Pontus and Propontis?"
14 years ago
·
#2770
The Death of Desdemona

Desdemona is smothered to death in bed by Othello. Within about half a minute, to judge by the ensuing dialogue between Othello and Emilia (to make sure that there will be no recovery), Othello again smothers Desdemona and she is pronounced by the dramatist to be dead. A few minutes elapse, when she suddenly speaks, utters several sentences that alternate with parts by Emilia and Othello, even to respond cogently to Emilia's question, and then, no further violence having been offered her, expires for good..

The question therefore arises how could Desdemona have regained consciousness and power of speech not less than four minutes after the actual stroke of death had been inflicted on her and she had been pronounced by the dramatist to be dead? Various medical authorities have been consulted on this point, and they all agreed that if she had regained consciousness sufficiently to speak intelligently, as she did, recovery would have ensued. What could have induced the dramatist to narrate a circumstance so extraordinary and so contrary to all human experience? Is it possible that he ever investigated the possibility of so strange an occurrence?

Is it a coincidence that Francis Bacon in his Historia Vita et Mortis, printed a few months after Othello first appeared in the First Folio, tells us that he had been making enquirers as to how long one's physical and mental powers can act in certain directions after every sign of life has gone, and he mentions the report of a man who, when his heart had been torn out by the executioner, was heard to utter three or four words of prayer. Bacon was probably referring to the case of Babington, who, in 1586, engineered a conspiracy to murder Queen Elizabeth and who, on his heart being torn out, is reported to have muttered, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." "Shakespeare" tells us of a lady who spoke after she had for a long time been deprived of breath; Bacon tells us of a man who spoke after his heart had been torn out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Broadly speaking the Shakespeare Plays can be divided into two groups; those printed during Will Shakspere's lifetime, and those which first appeared in the Folio of 1623, seven years after his death in 1616. Othello falls into neither group. It was first printed in 1622, six years after William's death, and was re-printed next year in the Folio of 1623, completely revised, with 160 lines deleted, and with trifling verbal alterations throughout. The re-arrangement of the lines required no little skill and reveals the hand of the author in almost every scene.

Stratfordians maintain that all the shortcomings of the quarto text are due to stage "cuts." The word "all" is too sweeping and inhibits further enquiry. Cuts for the stage were probably made, but in this case there is clear evidence of extensive revision. Some of the new lines are the author's substitutions for lines deleted; some restore omissions which lead to an obvious non sequitor ; some are more polished elegancies of speech. Most important of all, some are really fine passages, newly interpolated, which no competent editor or producer would omit.
14 years ago
·
#2771
This and the next post are partly in response to the argument that Francis Bacon didn’t have connections to the theatre world or to the Cheapside tavern environment known in the Henry IV plays.

The Bacon brothers and the theatres, Part 1 of 2

Anthony Bacon (1558-1601) was the eldest son of Nicholas and Anne Bacon. He and Francis collaborated on plays, and advised the Earl of Essex. (Anthony was Essex’s secretary and foreign correspondent passing on secret political information from the Continent). Hepworth Dixon in his book Personal History of Francis Bacon says of Francis and Anthony:

..."day and night their tongues and pens are busy in this work of correspondence. Anthony writes the Earl's letters, instructs his spies, drafts for him dispatches to the agents in foreign lands. Francis shapes for him a plan of conduct at the Court, and writes for him a treatise of advice which should have been the rule and would have been the salvation of his life."

We learn from Lady Anne Bacon's letters that Anthony and Francis were having plays performed at Anthony's house near the Bull's Inn, Bishopgate, in 1594; and the Bull Inn itself was frequently used for this purpose. In a letter written by Essex to the Queen, he makes reference to Anthony and Francis, and says:

"Already they print me and make me speak to the world, and shortly they will play me in what form they list upon the stage."

This is direct proof that Francis was accustomed to producing plays, along with Anthony, and that one or other (or both) of them was presumably the author of such plays.

The name Anthony occurs in no less than eight of the plays, including The Tempest, which has autobiographical references. In The Merchant of Venice Antonio figures as the generous brother. Not only were Anthony and Francis Bacon singularly devoted to each other, but on many occasions, such as in 1598, when Francis was in financial difficulties, and was actually seized and imprisoned at the instance of a Jewish creditor, Anthony came to his assistance and did everything in his power to help. This occurred shortly before the date usually assigned for the writing of this play (The Merchant of Venice).

----Reference: Enter Francis Bacon by Bertram Theobald,1932

From “In Search of Shakespeare”:

The home of James Burbage's The Theatre and The Curtain, Shoreditch lies a mile outside the old walls of London on the road that passed through Bishopsgate. Being beyond the jurisdiction of the city proved useful in a time when the Puritans viewed actors on the stage as an affront to the Protestant religion.

Shoreditch was a rough area where visitors would be well advised to wear a sword at all times. Bars and theatres attract many revelers and, along with them, the ubiquitous prostitutes, thieves, cutpurses and con men.
14 years ago
·
#2772
The Bacon brothers and the theatres, Part 2 of 2

Bishopsgate, London

Bishopsgate was one of the major entrance ways to the City of London. The tiny parish of St Helen's in Bishopsgate, was William Shakespeare's first home in the city, and was conveniently located for those theatre-types who needed to commute to Shoreditch.

Outside the city gate was the original site of Bedlam, the infamous lunatic asylum (now the site of the ever so slightly saner Liverpool Street Station), along with the White Hart and Dolphin Inns. These three-storey hostels were able to accommodate several hundred guests (and their horses). The area was also home to market stalls selling second-hand clothes, pawnbrokers and metal foundries. The crowded tenement buildings of "Petty France," and a growing community of Jewish immigrants, were also to be found outside the gate.

Inside the gate was a vast and crowded array of Inns, restaurants and the many entertainments required to service the newly arrived visitor to London.

Many of the Inns in the area, like the Black Bull, were also home to the small-scale theatres where William himself may have appeared on stage.

As with any area that attracted tourists and revelers, Bishopsgate was a hotbed of crime; pickpockets and con men infested every street.

http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/location ... on202.html

Anthony Bacon rented a house in Bishopgate in 1594 and lived there until his death in 1601. He must have had a particularly strong reason for moving to the house in Bishopgate. Anthony was now a semi-invalid, attacked by pain in both legs. The house sounds like the last place on earth someone in Anthony’s condition should be in:

“The doors which stand to the weather partly rotten with rain….Somewhat melancholy being of brick stepping down to the entrance….The coming to it with draining cock unpleasant….The boarding of great chamber much in decay.”

Lady Bacon was not long in voicing her objection to the whole project:

“Having some speech with Mr. Henshaw after you went hence touching your house taken in Bishopgate Street, and asking him what ministry there, he answered it was very mean. The minister there but ignorant. And he thought you should find the people there given to voluptuousness and the more to make them so, having but mean or not edifying instructions, and the Bull Inn there with continual interludes had even infected the inhabitants with corrupt and lewd dispositions. I marvel you did not first consider of the ministry as most of all needful, and then to live so near a place haunted with such pernicious and obscene plays and theatres able to poison the very godly. And do what you can, your servants shall be incited and spoiled. Good Lord, thought I, how ill follows it out for the choice. No ministry at Twickenham either. Surely I am very sorry you went from Gray’s Inn where there was good Christian company in comparison. But your men always overrule you.”

It has been suggested that Anthony moved there so he could be available for duties provided by Essex, but if that was the reason, his Gray’s Inn lodging would have served as well. A closer look throws light on Anthony Bacon’s motivation. Anthony was almost next door to the Bull Inn, where plays were performed, and near Shoreditch where the Theatre and the Curtain were located. The brothers Burbage were already lodging in Bishopgate with their fellow-actors, which would have included William Shakespeare. It is apparent that Anthony was working for his brother Francis who had, by this time, been deeply involved with the playhouses. Significantly, in 1598 the Stratford man became a lodger in Silver Street. Nicholas Bacon had owned tenements there which he bequeathed to Anthony, and 1598 was when the name William Shakespeare first appeared on a play written by Francis. So there was a need for more secure control over the Stratford man. One suggestion is that the Bacon brothers did this by providing the actor free lodging in Silver Street.

Antonio Perez, the King of Spain's former Secretary of State was Philip II's exiled minister, who defected and escaped Spain to France in 1591. He came to England in 1593 to live in London, persona grata, first at Bishopgate with Anthony Bacon and then at Essex House, where Essex gave Perez a suite or rooms--Perez having offered intelligence to Essex in December 1594. Perez was the model for Don Adriana de Armado in Love's Labour's Lost. A forum post on this topic was posted here sometime earlier.

See page 125 for a diagram of Bishopsgate and its theatre inns:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LtRvYd ... q=&f=false

From page 127:
“The Bishopsgate inns were also centres of theatrical shows. Most famous was the Black Bull, which Shakespeare would have known and where he may have acted. Early in Elizabeth’s reign it was converted into a theatre inn with a permanent stage. The Black Bull had become such a well-known venue when Shakespeare was a boy that John Florio mentions it in his English-Italian phrase book of 1578 (‘Where shal we goe? To a playe at the Bull’). In 1583 it was licensed as a regular London venue for the Queen’s Men and they played here ‘oftentimes’. So if Shakespeare was indeed with the Queen’s Men in the late 1580’s, this is where he would have played in London.
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