Beano's Fourth Chin
1/11/2006, 03:44 PM
Around one hundred and fifty years after William Shakespeare's death in 1616, doubts began to be expressed by some about the authorship of the plays and poetry attributed to him. The term Shakespeare authorship normally refers to the conspiracy theory inspired by these doubters, although it can also refer to less contentious academic debates about what exactly Shakespeare wrote in the collaborative world of the Elizabethan theatre.
In 1856, William Henry Smith put forth the claim that the author of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon, a major scientist, a courtier, a diplomat, an essayist, a historian and a successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).
Smith was supported by Delia Bacon in her book The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays (1857), in which she maintains that Shakespeare was in fact a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system, for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. She professed to discover this system beneath the superficial text of the plays.
Bacon was particularly favoured as a candidate by advocates of cryptogram theories. As an example, some anti-Stratfordians have suggested that honorificabilitudinitatibus (see above) is actually an anagram for the Latin phrase hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi (These plays, born of F. Bacon, are preserved for the world).
Supporters of Bacon also draw attention to similarities between the language of the plays and the sayings collected by Bacon in his notebook, the "Promus". Another link is the Northumberland Manuscript, a document that has both their names written together many times over on the same page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespearean_authorship
In 1856, William Henry Smith put forth the claim that the author of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon, a major scientist, a courtier, a diplomat, an essayist, a historian and a successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).
Smith was supported by Delia Bacon in her book The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays (1857), in which she maintains that Shakespeare was in fact a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system, for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. She professed to discover this system beneath the superficial text of the plays.
Bacon was particularly favoured as a candidate by advocates of cryptogram theories. As an example, some anti-Stratfordians have suggested that honorificabilitudinitatibus (see above) is actually an anagram for the Latin phrase hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi (These plays, born of F. Bacon, are preserved for the world).
Supporters of Bacon also draw attention to similarities between the language of the plays and the sayings collected by Bacon in his notebook, the "Promus". Another link is the Northumberland Manuscript, a document that has both their names written together many times over on the same page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespearean_authorship