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Bacon and Shakspere

Chapter 6: BACON AND SHAKSPERE A CHRONOGRAPH
By William Henry Burr
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British LiteratureEssays, Letters & SpeechesHistory - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)

About This Book

An extended argument examines surviving signatures, spellings, and documentary records associated with the poet and contends that the erratic autographs and orthographic variability make it unlikely he authored the works attributed to him. The author identifies Francis Bacon as the concealed poet Ignotus and supports this claim through chronographic parallels, close reading of the sonnets, examination of forgeries and legal instruments, and comparative analysis of contemporary spellings and handwriting. The text combines palaeographic detail with documentary chronology to argue for misattribution and to trace how authorship became obscured.

BACON AND SHAKSPERE A CHRONOGRAPH

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1. If the Parliament met November 23, 1584, as Mr. Spedding distinctly says, then Bacon was not yet twenty-four.

An ideal tableau of the youthful statesman is gaily depicted by Wm. Hepworth Dixon, in his “Personal History of Lord Bacon:”

“How he appears in outward guise and aspect among these courtly and martial contemporaries the miniature of Hilyard helps us to conceive. Slight in build, rosy and round in fleshy dight in a sumptuous suit, the head well-set, erect, and framed in a thick starched fence of frill; a bloom of study and travel on the fat, girlish face, which looks far younger than his years; the hat and feather tossed aside from the white brow, over which, crisps and curls a mane of dark, soft hair; an English nose, firm, open, straight; a mouth delicate and small—a lady’s or jester’s mouth—a thousand pranks and humors, quibbles, whims and laughters lurking in its twinkling, tremulous lines;—such is Francis Bacon at the age of twenty-four.”

Bearing in mind that Bacon is three years and three months older than Shakspere, we will now parallel their lives by successive years.

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