francis Bacon pig bacon Roger Bacon
Dee Finney's blog
start date July 20, 2011
Today's date Jan 7, 2012
page 102
TOPIC: ALL ABOUT BACON - JOIN THE PUZZLE SOLVERS
1-7-12 - DREAM - ALL ABOUT BACON
I was living in my house in New Berlin (prior to 1980) I was cookiing bacon on the stove in the kitchen. It smelled wonderful and we loved to fry eggs in bacon grease, or in lard I had rendered fresh off a pig. Yum!
However, I had bacon cut up and iti was getting mixed up in piles of clothes I was going to iron, and the orange cat I had was trying to steal the bacon and eat it raw. My husband started yelling from the other room that the cat was stealing the bacon, and I couldn't cook,, and iron and chase the cat all at the same time.
Then the telephone rang. I had to answer it of course and it was my friend Mikki (I actually didn't know Mikki until 1993
I had just started to talk to Kikki when the hone rang again, so I clicked over to see who was calling. It was a woman named Bonnie, who i also met in 1993. I wanted to get back to Mikki but all of a sudden I couldn't find th ephone because I was still tring t okeep th ecat away from the bacon and I didn't want to take a chance with that.
As frustrated as I was about then, a man walked through the room who had been visitng my husband,. I ddin't know him but I needed help finding the phone so I hollered, "'Wait!" to stop him from leaving.
So th eman stood in the doorway,, a rather handsome man at that, but I was tryinng desparately to find the phone which was probablyh under some of the piled clothing I had to iron, which was now mixed with slabs of bacon.
The man standing the doorway started to look frustrated too that I was making him wait for me, so I forced my eyes awake so he owuldn't have to stand there and wait for me to get back to him.
***********
NOTE FROM DEE: I puublished the following page privately for some e-mail friends. The possiblel author is Roger Bacon which is why you are getting access to this age. Google cannot find it as its published privately, so consider yourself very privileged to get a look at this page. Have fun wiith the information. If you can solve the puzzle, you wil be first in history to do so.
http://www.greatdreams.com/voynich/puzzle_challenge.htm
Here is a little about Roger Bacon:
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. (c. 1214–1294), (scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, meaning "wonderful teacher"), was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods. He is sometimes credited, mainly starting in the 19th century, as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by the works of Aristotle and later pseudo-Aristotelian works, possibly of Arabic origins. However, more recent reevaluations emphasize that he was essentially a medieval thinker, with much of his "experimental" knowledge obtained from books, in the scholastic tradition.[1] A survey of the reception of Bacon's work over centuries found that it often reflects the concerns and controversies central to the receivers.[2]
Roger Bacon was born in Ilchester in Somerset, possibly in 1213 or 1214 at the Ilchester Friary.[3] The only source for his date of birth is his statement in the Opus Tertium, written in 1267, that "forty years have passed since I first learned the alphabet". The 1214 birth date assumes he was not being literal, and may have meant 40 years had passed since he matriculated at Oxford at the age of 13. If he had been literal, his birth date was more likely to have been around 1220/1222. In the same passage he reports that for all but two of those forty years he had always been engaged in study.[4] His family appears to have been well-off, but, during the stormy reign of Henry III of England, their property was despoiled and several members of the family were driven into exile.
Bacon studied at Oxford and may have been a disciple of Grosseteste. He became a master at Oxford, lecturing on Aristotle. There is no evidence he was ever awarded a doctorate — the title Doctor Mirabilis was posthumous and figurative. Sometime between 1237 and 1245, he began to lecture at the university of Paris, then the centre of intellectual life in Europe. His whereabouts between 1247 and 1256 are uncertain, but about 1256 he became a friar in the Franciscan Order. As a Franciscan friar, Bacon no longer held a teaching post, and after 1260 his activities were further restricted by a Franciscan statute forbidding friars from publishing books or pamphlets without specific approval.[5]
Bacon circumvented this restriction through his acquaintance with Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulques, who became Pope Clement IV in 1265. The new Pope issued a mandate ordering Bacon to write to him concerning the place of philosophy within theology. As a result Bacon sent the Pope his Opus Majus, which presented his views on how the philosophy of Aristotle and the new science could be incorporated into a new Theology. Besides the Opus maius Bacon also sent his Opus minus, De multiplicatione specierum, and, perhaps, other works on alchemy and astrology.[6]
Pope Clement died in 1268. Sometime between 1277 and 1279, Bacon was probably imprisoned or placed under house arrest. The circumstances for this are still mysterious. Sometime after 1278 Bacon returned to the Franciscan House at Oxford, where he continued his studies.[7] He is believed to have died in 1294.
In the 19th century it was a widely held interpretation that Bacon was a modern experimental scientist who emerged before his time. This reflected two prevalent views of the period: an emphasis upon experiment as the principal form of scientific activity and a general acceptance of the characterization of the Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages".[9][10] Some writers of the period carried this account further. For instance, according to Andrew Dickson White, Bacon was repeatedly persecuted and imprisoned because of the opposition of the medieval Church.[11][12] In this view, which is still reflected in some 21st century popular science books,[13][14] Bacon would be an advocate of modern experimental science who somehow emerged as an isolated figure in an age supposed to be hostile toward scientific ideas.[15] He was also presented as a visionary; for instance Frederick Mayer wrote that Bacon predicted the invention of the submarine, automobile, and airplane.[16]
However, in the course of the 20th century, the philosophical understanding of the role of experiment in the sciences has been substantially modified. Starting with works of Pierre Duhem, Raoul Carton, and Lynn Thorndike,[17] Bacon's advocacy of scientia experimentalis has been argued to differ from modern experimental science.[18] New historical research has also shown that medieval Christians were not generally opposed to scientific investigation[19][20] and revealed the extent and variety of medieval science. In fact, many medieval sources of and influences on Bacon's scientific activity have been identified.[21] For instance, Bacon's idea that inductively derived conclusions should be submitted for further experimental testing is very much like Robert Grosseteste's 'Method of Verification',[22] and Bacon's work on optics and the calendar also followed the lines of inquiry of Grosseteste.[23]
As a result, the picture of Bacon has changed. One recent study summarized that: "Bacon was not a modern, out of step with his age, or a harbinger of things to come, but a brilliant, combative, and somewhat eccentric schoolman of the thirteenth century, endeavoring to take advantage of the new learning just becoming available while remaining true to traditional notions... of the importance to be attached to philosophical knowledge".[24] Bacon is thus seen as a leading, but not isolated figure in the beginnings of medieval universities at Paris and Oxford, among other contemporary exponents of this shift in the philosophy of science (as we call it today), including Grosseteste (who preceded Bacon), William of Auvergne, Henry of Ghent, Albert Magnus, Thomas Acquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.[25]
As to the alleged persecution, the first known reference to an imprisonment originates around 80 years after Bacon's death. It says the order was given by the head of the Franciscans because of unspecified "suspected novelties".[26][27] However, the fact that no earlier report has been found drives skepticism over the assertion. Moreover, current historians of science who see an incarceration as plausible typically don't connect it with Bacon's scientific writings.[27] Instead, if it happened, scholars speculate that his troubles resulted from such things as his sympathies for radical Franciscans,[28] attraction to contemporary prophecies,[27] or interest in certain astrological doctrines.[29] Bacon's personality has also been mentioned as a factor.[30]
A recent review of the many visions that each age has held about Roger Bacon says contemporary scholarship still neglects one of the most important aspects of his life and thought: the commitment to the Franciscan order. "His Opus maius was a plea for reform addressed to the supreme spiritual head of the Christian faith, written against a background of apocalyptic expectation and informed by the driving concerns of the friars. It was designed to improve training for missionaries and to provide new skills to be employed in the defence of the Christian world against the enmity of non-Christians and of the Antichrist. It cannot usefully be read solely in the context of the history of science and philosophy."[2]
Bacon made many discoveries while coming near to many others, despite many disadvantages and discouragements.[citation needed] His Opus Majus contains treatments of mathematics and optics, alchemy, and the positions and sizes of the celestial bodies.
The scientific training Bacon had received showed him the rare defects in existing academic debate.[citation needed] Aristotle was known only through translations, as none of the professors would learn Greek; the same was true of Scripture and many of the other auctores ("authorities") referenced in traditional education. In contrast to Aristotle's argument that facts be collected before deducing scientific truths, physical science was not carried out by observations from the natural world, but by arguments based solely on tradition and prescribed authorities (see Scholasticism).
Bacon withdrew from the scholastic routine and devoted himself to languages and experimental research. The mathematicians whom he considered perfect were Peter of Maricourt and John of London, and two were good: Campanus of Novara and a Master Nicholas. Peter was the author of a famous letter to a friend, Epistola de Magnete, in which he described some of the earliest European experiments with magnetism.[31] Campanus wrote several important works on astronomy, astrology, and the calendar.[32] Bacon often mentioned his debt to the work of Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh, as well as to other lesser figures. He was clearly not an isolated scholar in the thirteenth century.[33]
In his writings, Bacon calls for a reform of theological study. Less emphasis should be placed on minor philosophical distinctions than had been the case in scholasticism. Instead, the Bible itself should return to the centre of attention and theologians should thoroughly study the languages in which their original sources were composed. He was fluent in several languages and lamented the corruption of the holy texts and the works of the Greek philosophers by numerous mistranslations and misinterpretations. Furthermore, he urged all theologians to study all sciences closely, and to add them to the normal university curriculum. With regard to the obtaining of knowledge, he strongly championed experimental study over reliance on authority, arguing that "thence cometh quiet to the mind". Bacon did not restrict this approach to theological studies. He rejected the blind following of prior authorities, both in theological and scientific study, which was the accepted method of undertaking study in his day.
In the Opus Minus he criticizes his contemporaries Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus who, he says, had not studied the philosophy of Aristotle but only acquired their learning during their life as preachers.[34] Albert was received at Paris as an authority equal to Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes,[35] leading Bacon to proclaim that "never in the world [had] such monstrosity occurred before."[36]
The study of optics in part five of Opus Majus draws heavily on the works of both Claudius Ptolemy (his Optics in Arabic translation) and the Islamic scientists Alkindus (al-Kindi) and Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham).[37] He includes a discussion of the physiology of eyesight, the anatomy of the eye and the brain, and considers light, distance, position, and size, direct vision, reflected vision, and refraction, mirrors and lenses. His research in optics was primarily oriented by the legacy of Alhazen through a Latin translation of the latter's monumental Kitab al-manazir (De aspectibus; Perspectivae; The Optics), while the impact of the tradition of al-Kindi (Alkindus) was principally mediated through the influence that this Muslim scholar had on the optics of Robert Grosseteste. Moreover, Bacon's investigations of the properties of the magnifying glass partly rested on the handed-down legacy of Islamic opticians, mainly Alhazen, who was in his turn influenced by Ibn Sahl's 10th century legacy in dioptrics.[38]
Drawing on the recently discovered Greco-Muslim astronomy and on the calendaric writings of Robert Grosseteste, Bacon criticized the Julian calendar, describing it as intolerable, horrible and laughable. He proposed to correct its errors by deleting a day from the calendar every 125 or 130 days.[39]
In his own writings of 1260–1280 Bacon cited Secretum secretorum, which he attributed to Aristotle, far more than his contemporaries did. Often used as an argument for the special influence that this work had on Bacon's own is the manuscript of Secretum that Bacon edited, complete with his own introduction and notes, something Bacon seldom did with others' works. Although some early 20th century scholars like Robert Steele have pushed further along this path, arguing that Bacon's contact with the Secretum was a turning point in Bacon's philosophy, transforming him into an experimentalist, there is no clear reference to such a decisive impact of the Secretum in Bacon's own words. The dating of Bacon's edition of the Secretum is a key argument in this debate, but is still unresolved, with those arguing for a greater impact dating it earlier than those who urge caution in this interpretation.[40]
The cryptic Voynich manuscript has been attributed to Bacon by various sources, including by its first recorded owner, in a book drafted by William Romaine Newbold and posthumously edited and published by Roland Grubb Kent in 1928,[41] and in a 2005 book of Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone published by Doubleday and Broadway Books.[14][42] In strongly worded terms, historians of science Lynn Thorndike[43] and George Sarton have dismissed these claims as unsupported.[44][45]
Another work of contentious date and even origin is the Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, et de Nullitate Magiae (meaning Letter on the Secret Workings of Art and Nature, and on the Vanity of Magic), sometimes alternatively entitled De Mirabili Potestate Artis et Naturae (On the Wonderful Powers of Art and Nature).[46][47][48][49] This treatise dismisses magical practices like necromancy,[48] and contains most of the alchemical work attributed to Bacon, chiefly a formula for philosopher's stone,[49] and perhaps one for gunpowder.[46] It also contains a number of passages about hypothetical flying machines and (what we today call) submarines, attributing their first use to Alexander the Great.[50]
Bacon is also the ascribed author of the alchemical manual Speculum Alchemiae, which was translated into English as The Mirror of Alchimy in 1597.[51] It is a short treatise about the composition and origin of metals, espousing "conventional" (with respect to the period) Arabian theories of mercury and sulfur as the constituents of metals, and containing vague allusions to transmutation. About this work, John Maxson Stillman wrote that "there is nothing in it that is characteristic of Roger Bacon's style or ideas, nor that distinguishes it from many unimportant alchemical lucubrations of anonymous writers of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries". M. M. Pattison Muir had a similar opinion, and Edmund Oscar von Lippmann considered this text a pseudepigraph.[52]edit Gunpowder
Bacon is often considered the first European to describe a mixture containing the essential ingredients of gunpowder. Based on two passages from Bacon's Opus Maius and Opus Tertium, extensively analyzed by J. R. Partington, several scholars cited by Joseph Needham concluded that Bacon had most likely witnessed at least one demonstration of Chinese firecrackers, possibly obtained with the intermediation of other Franciscans, like his friend William of Rubruck, who had visited the Mongols.[46][53] The most telling passage reads: "We have an example of these things (that act on the senses) in [the sound and fire of] that children's toy which is made in many [diverse] parts of the world; i.e. a device no bigger than one's thumb. From the violence of that salt called saltpetre [together with sulphur and willow charcoal, combined into a powder] so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, no more than a bit of parchment [containing it], that we find [the ear assaulted by a noise] exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash brighter than the most brilliant lightning."[46]
More controversial are the claims originating with Royal Artillery colonel Henry William Lovett Hime (at the beginning of the 20th century) that a cryptogram existed in Bacon's Epistola, giving the ratio of ingredients of the mixture. These were published, among other places, in the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.[54] An early critic of this claim was Lynn Thorndike, starting with a letter in the 1915 edition of the journal Science ,[55] and repeated in several books of his. M. M. Pattison Muir also expressed his doubts on Hime's theory, and they were echoed by John Maxson Stillman.[56] Robert Steele[57] and George Sarton also joined the critics.[58] Needham concurred with these earlier critics in their opinion that the additional passage does not originate with Bacon.[46] In any case, the proportions claimed to have been deciphered (7:5:5 saltpeter:charcoal:sulfur) are not even useful for stuffing firecrakers, burning slowly while producing mostly smoke,
To commemorate Bacon's seven hundredth anniversary, Professor John Erskine wrote A Pageant of the Thirteenth Century, a biographical play which was produced at Columbia University and published as a book by Columbia University Press in 1914.
An accessible description of Roger Bacon's life and times is contained in the fiction book Doctor Mirabilis, written in 1964 by the science fiction author James Blish.[61] This is the second book in Blish's quasi-religious trilogy After Such Knowledge, and is a recounting of Bacon's life and struggle to develop a 'Universal Science'. Though thoroughly researched, with a host of references, including extensive use of Bacon's own writings, frequently in the original Latin, the book is written in the style of a novel, and Blish himself referred to it as 'fiction' or 'a vision'. Blish's view of Bacon is uncompromisingly that he was the first scientist, and he provides a postscript to the novel in which he sets forth these views. Central to his depiction of Roger Bacon is that 'He was not an inventor, an Edison or Luther Burbank, holding up a test tube with a shout of Eureka!' He was instead a theoretical scientist probing fundamental realities, and his visions of modern technology were just by-products of "...the way he normally thought — the theory of theories as tools..." Blish indicates where Bacon's writings, for example, consider Newtonian metrical frameworks for space, then reject these for something which reads remarkably like Einsteinian Relativity, and all '...breathtakingly without pause or hiccup, breezily moving without any recourse through over 800 years of physics'.
Many writers of earlier times have been attracted to Roger Bacon as the epitome of a wise and subtle possessor of forbidden knowledge, similar to Faustus. A succession of legends and unverifiable stories has grown up about him, for example, that he created a brazen talking head which could answer any question. This has a central role in the play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay written by Robert Greene in about 1589.
Bacon also appears as first scientist in The Black Rose, the most commercially successful book by Thomas Costain, written in 1945. The Black Rose is set in the Middle Ages. Bacon's personal presence in the narrative is brief, but includes a demonstration of gunpowder and a few sentences outlining a philosophy of science which might as easily be attributed to Francis Bacon centuries later. The novel's Roger Bacon serves to motivate Costain's protagonist, a fictional Englishman who journeys to China during the reigns of Edward I and Kublai Khan. Costain's narration includes technology such as the compass, the telescope, rockets and the manufacture of paper, all described by his young adventurer with an eye toward bringing these marvels back to Bacon for analysis. Returning to England to find Bacon gone and under house arrest, the traveller begs King Edward to intercede with the pope for the Franciscan's release, arguing that with Bacon's imprisonment a great light of the world is in danger of being put out. Costain's character also comes to argue for emancipation of the Saxon villeins (serfs), linking political with intellectual enlightenment under the fictional Bacon's influence.
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans,[1] KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.
Bacon has been called the father of empiricism.[2] His works established and popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. His dedication probably led to his death, bringing him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
Bacon was knighted in 1603, and created both the Baron Verulam in 1618, and the Viscount St Alban in 1621;[3] as he died without heirs both peerages became extinct upon his death. He famously died of pneumonia contracted while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat
Bacon was born on 22 January 1561 at York House near the Strand in London, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne (Cooke) Bacon, the daughter of noted humanist Anthony Cooke. His mother's sister was married to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, making Burghley Francis Bacon's uncle. Biographers believe that Bacon was educated at home in his early years owing to poor health (which plagued him throughout his life), receiving tuition from John Walsall, a graduate of Oxford with a strong leaning towards Puritanism. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, on 5 April 1573 at the age of twelve,[4] living for three years there together with his older brother Anthony under the personal tutelage of Dr John Whitgift, future Archbishop of Canterbury. Bacon's education was conducted largely in Latin and followed the medieval curriculum. He was also educated at the University of Poitiers. It was at Cambridge that he first met Queen Elizabeth, who was impressed by his precocious intellect, and was accustomed to calling him "the young Lord Keeper".[5]
His studies brought him to the belief that the methods and results of science
as then practised were erroneous. His reverence for
Aristotle
conflicted with his loathing of Aristotelian philosophy, which seemed to him
barren, disputatious, and wrong in its objectives.
Trinity College, Great Court with fountain
On 27 June 1576, he and Anthony entered de societate magistrorum at Gray's Inn. A few months later, Francis went abroad with Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador at Paris, while Anthony continued his studies at home. The state of government and society in France under Henry III afforded him valuable political instruction. For the next three years he visited Blois, Poitiers, Tours, Italy, and Spain. During his travels, Bacon studied language, statecraft, and civil law while performing routine diplomatic tasks. On at least one occasion he delivered diplomatic letters to England for Walsingham, Burghley, and Leicester, as well as for the queen.
The sudden death of his father in February 1579 prompted Bacon to return to England. Sir Nicholas had laid up a considerable sum of money to purchase an estate for his youngest son, but he died before doing so, and Francis was left with only a fifth of that money. Having borrowed money, Bacon got into debt. To support himself, he took up his residence in law at Gray's Inn in 1579.
Bacon's threefold goals were to uncover truth, to serve his country, and to serve his church. He sought to further these ends by seeking a prestigious post. In 1580, through his uncle, Lord Burghley, he applied for a post at court, which might enable him to pursue a life of learning. His application failed. For two years he worked quietly at Gray's Inn, until he was admitted as an outer barrister in 1582.
His parliamentary career began when he was elected MP for Bossiney, Devon in a 1581 by-election. In 1584, he took his seat in parliament for Melcombe in Dorset, and subsequently for Taunton (1586). At this time, he began to write on the condition of parties in the church, as well as on the topic of philosophical reform in the lost tract, Temporis Partus Maximus. Yet, he failed to gain a position he thought would lead him to success. He showed signs of sympathy to Puritanism, attending the sermons of the Puritan chaplain of Gray's Inn and accompanying his mother to the Temple chapel to hear Walter Travers. This led to the publication of his earliest surviving tract, which criticised the English church's suppression of the Puritan clergy. In the Parliament of 1586, he openly urged execution for Mary, Queen of Scots.
About this time, he again approached his powerful uncle for help; this move was followed by his rapid progress at the bar. He became Bencher in 1586, and he was elected a reader in 1587, delivering his first set of lectures in Lent the following year. In 1589, he received the valuable appointment of reversion to the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, although he did not formally take office until 1608 – a post which was worth £16,000 a year.[6]
In 1588 he was returned as MP for Liverpool and then for Middlesex in 1593. He later sat three times for Ipswich (1597, 1601, 1604) and once for Cambridge University (1614).[7]
In 1592, he was commissioned to write a tract in response to the Jesuit Robert Parson's anti-government polemic, which he entitled Certain observations made upon a libel, identifying England with the ideals of democratic Athens against the belligerence of Spain.
Bacon took his third parliamentary seat for Middlesex when in February 1593 Elizabeth summoned Parliament to investigate a Roman Catholic plot against her. Bacon's opposition to a bill that would levy triple subsidies in half the usual time offended many people.[clarification needed] Opponents accused him of seeking popularity. For a time, the royal court excluded him.
When the Attorney-Generalship fell vacant in 1594, Lord Essex's influence was not enough to secure Bacon that office. Likewise, Bacon failed to secure the lesser office of Solicitor-General in 1595.[6] To console him for these disappointments, Essex presented him with a property at Twickenham, which he sold subsequently for £1,800.
In 1596, Bacon became Queen's Counsel, but missed the appointment of Master of the Rolls. During the next few years, his financial situation remained bad. His friends could find no public office for him, and a scheme for retrieving his position by a marriage with the wealthy and young widow Lady Elizabeth Hatton failed after she broke off their relationship upon accepting marriage to a wealthier man. In 1598 Bacon was arrested for debt. Afterwards however, his standing in the Queen's eyes improved. Gradually, Bacon earned the standing of one of the learned counsels, though he had no commission or warrant and received no salary. His relationship with the Queen further improved when he severed ties with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, a shrewd move because Essex was executed for treason in 1601.
With others, Bacon was appointed to investigate the charges against Essex, his former friend and benefactor. A number of Essex's followers confessed that Essex had planned a rebellion against the Queen.[8] Bacon was subsequently a part of the legal team headed by Attorney General Sir Edward Coke at Essex's treason trial.[9] After the execution, the Queen ordered Bacon to write the official government account of the trial, which was later published as A DECLARATION of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his Complices, against her Majestie and her Kingdoms ... after Bacon's first draft was heavily edited by the Queen and her ministers.[10]
The succession of James I brought Bacon into greater favour. He was knighted in 1603. In another shrewd move, Bacon wrote his Apologie in defence of his proceedings in the case of Essex, as Essex had favoured James to succeed to the throne.
The following year, during the course of the uneventful first parliament session, Bacon married Alice Barnham. In June 1607 he was at last rewarded with the office of Solicitor-General.[6] The following year, he began working as the Clerkship of the Star Chamber. In spite of a generous income, old debts still couldn't be paid. He sought further promotion and wealth by supporting King James and his arbitrary policies.
In 1610 the fourth session of James' first parliament met. Despite Bacon's advice to him, James and the Commons found themselves at odds over royal prerogatives and the king's embarrassing extravagance. The House was finally dissolved in February 1611. Throughout this period Bacon managed to stay in the favour of the king while retaining the confidence of the Commons.
In 1613, Bacon was finally appointed attorney general, after advising the king to shuffle judicial appointments. As attorney general, Bacon prosecuted Somerset in 1616. The so-called "Prince's Parliament" of April 1614 objected to Bacon's presence in the seat for Cambridge and to the various royal plans which Bacon had supported. Although he was allowed to stay, parliament passed a law that forbade the attorney-general to sit in parliament. His influence over the king had evidently inspired resentment or apprehension in many of his peers. Bacon, however, continued to receive the King's favour, which led to his appointment in March 1617 as the temporary Regent of England (for a period of a month), and in 1618 as Lord Chancellor. On 12 July 1618 the king created Bacon Baron Verulam of Verulam or, as the new peer styled himself, Francis, Lord Verulam.[6]
Bacon continued to use his influence with the king to mediate between the throne and Parliament and in this capacity he was further elevated, as Viscount St Alban, on 27 January 1621.[
TOWER OF LONDON -TRAITOR'S GATE1]
Bacon's public career ended in disgrace in 1621. After he fell into debt, a Parliamentary Committee on the administration of the law charged him with twenty-three separate counts of corruption. To the lords, who sent a committee to enquire whether a confession was really his, he replied, "My lords, it is my act, my hand, and my heart; I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." He was sentenced to a fine of £40,000 and committed to the Tower of London during the king's pleasure; the imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was remitted by the king.[12] More seriously, parliament declared Bacon incapable of holding future office or sitting in parliament. He narrowly escaped undergoing degradation, which would have stripped him of his titles of nobility. Subsequently the disgraced viscount devoted himself to study and writing.
There seems little doubt that Bacon had accepted gifts from litigants, but this was an accepted custom of the time and not necessarily evidence of deeply corrupt behaviour.[13] While acknowledging that his conduct had been lax, he countered that he had never allowed gifts to influence his judgement and, indeed, he had on occasion given a verdict against those who had paid him. The true reason for his acknowledgement of guilt is the subject of debate, but it may have been prompted by his poor state of health, or by a view that through his fame and the greatness of his office he would be spared harsh punishment. He may even have been blackmailed, with a threat to charge him with sodomy, into confession.[13][14]
Relationships
Francis Bacon
When he was 36, Bacon engaged in the courtship of Elizabeth Hatton, a young widow of 20. Reportedly, she broke off their relationship upon accepting marriage to a wealthier man—Edward Coke. Years later, Bacon still wrote of his regret that the marriage to Hatton had not taken place.[15]
At the age of forty-five, Bacon married Alice Barnham, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a well-connected London alderman and MP. Bacon wrote two sonnets proclaiming his love for Alice. The first was written during his courtship and the second on his wedding day, 10 May 1606. When Bacon was appointed Lord Chancellor, "by special Warrant of the King", Lady Bacon was given precedence over all other Court ladies.
Reports of increasing friction in his marriage to Alice appeared, with speculation that some of this may have been due to financial resources not being as readily available to her as she was accustomed to having in the past. Alice was reportedly interested in fame and fortune, and when reserves of money were no longer available, there were complaints about where all the money was going. Alice Chambers Bunten wrote in her Life of Alice Barnham[16] that, upon their descent into debt, she actually went on trips to ask for financial favours and assistance from their circle of friends. Bacon disinherited her upon discovering her secret romantic relationship with John Underhill. He rewrote his will, which had previously been very generous to her (leaving her lands, goods, and income), revoking it all.
Though the well-connected antiquary John Aubrey noted among his private memoranda concerning Bacon, "He was a Pederast. His Ganimeds and Favourites tooke Bribes",[17] biographers continue to debate about Bacon's sexual inclinations and the precise nature of his personal relationships.[18] Several authors[19][20] believe that despite his marriage Bacon was primarily attracted to the same sex. Professor Forker[21] for example has explored the "historically documentable sexual preferences" of both King James and Bacon – and concluded they were all oriented to "masculine love", a contemporary term that "seems to have been used exclusively to refer to the sexual preference of men for members of their own gender."[22] The Jacobean antiquarian, Sir Simonds D'Ewes implied there had been a question of bringing him to trial for buggery.[23] This conclusion has been disputed by others,[24][25] who consider the sources to be more open to interpretation.
Monument to Bacon at his burial place,
St Michael's Church in
St Albans
On 9 April 1626 Bacon died of pneumonia while at Arundel mansion at Highgate outside London. An influential account of the circumstances of his death was given by John Aubrey's Brief Lives. Aubrey has been criticised for his evident credulousness in this and other works; on the other hand, he knew Thomas Hobbes, Bacon's fellow-philosopher and friend. Aubrey's vivid account, which portrays Bacon as a martyr to experimental scientific method, had him journeying to Highgate through the snow with the King's physician when he is suddenly inspired by the possibility of using the snow to preserve meat: "They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They alighted out of the coach and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate hill, and bought a fowl, and made the woman exenterate it".
After stuffing the fowl with snow, Bacon contracted a fatal case of pneumonia. Some people, including Aubrey, consider these two contiguous, possibly coincidental events as related and causative of his death: "The Snow so chilled him that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his Lodging ... but went to the Earle of Arundel's house at Highgate, where they put him into ... a damp bed that had not been layn-in ... which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 days as I remember Mr Hobbes told me, he died of Suffocation."
Being unwittingly on his deathbed, the philosopher wrote his last letter to his absent host and friend Lord Arundel:
My very good Lord,—I was likely to have had the fortune of Caius Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of Mount Vesuvius; for I was also desirous to try an experiment or two touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and Highgate, I was taken with such a fit of casting as I know not whether it were the Stone, or some surfeit or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when I came to your Lordship's House, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your housekeeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your Lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your Lordship's House was happy to me, and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to it. I know how unfit it is for me to write with any other hand than mine own, but by my troth my fingers are so disjointed with sickness that I cannot steadily hold a pen."[26]
Another account appears in a biography by William Rawley, Bacon's personal secretary and chaplain:
He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before; God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation.[27]
At his funeral, over thirty great minds collected together their eulogies of him, which was then later published in Latin.[28]
He left personal assets of about £7,000 and lands that realised £6,000 when sold.[29] His debts amounted to more than £23,000, equivalent to more than £3m at current value.[29][30]
Francis Bacon is the father of the scientific method, which is fundamental to natural philosophy. In his magnum opus, Novum Organum, or "new instrument", Francis Bacon argued that although philosophy at the time mainly used deductive syllogisms to interpret nature, mainly owing to Aristotle's logic (or Organon), the philosopher should instead proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to physical law. Before beginning this induction, the enquirer is to free his or her mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the truth. These are called "Idols" (idola),[31] and are of four kinds:
The end of induction is the discovery of forms, the ways in which natural phenomena occur, the causes from which they proceed.
Bacon explicated his somewhat fragmentary ethical system – derived through use of his methods – in the seventh and eighth books of his De augmentis scientiarum (1623) – where he distinguished between duty to the community (an ethical matter) and duty to God (a religious matter). Bacon claimed that:
Regarding faith, in De augmentis, he wrote that "the more discordant, therefore, and incredible, the divine mystery is, the more honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith." He wrote in "The Essays: Of Atheism" that "a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion." Meanwhile in the very next essay called: "Of Superstition" Bacon remarks- "Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue... but superstition dismounts all these and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men: therefore atheism never did perturb states; for it makes men wary of themeselves... and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times; but superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new 'primum mobile.' that ravisheth all the spheres of government."[32] However, Bacon did maintain his own Christian beliefs, of which he differentiated from "superstition".[citation needed] Bacon notes that “It is better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of him: for the one is unbelief the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.”[33] Yet even more than this, Bacon's views of God are in accordance with popular protestant theology, as he writes that “They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts in his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.”[33]
Nevertheless, Bacon contrasted the new approach of the development of science with that of the Middle Ages:
"Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world."
Since Bacon's ideal was widespread revolution of the common method of scientific inquiry, there had to be some way by which his method could become widespread. His solution was to lobby the state to make natural philosophy a matter of greater importance – not only to fund it, but also to regulate it. While in office under Queen Elizabeth, he even advocated for the employment of a Minister for Science and Technology; a position which was never realised. Later under King James, Bacon wrote in The Advancement of Learning: "The King should take order for the collecting and perfecting of a Natural and Experimental History, true and severe (unencumbered with literature and book-learning), such as philosophy may be built upon, so that philosophy and the sciences may no longer float in air, but rest on the solid foundation of experience of every kind."[34]
While Bacon was a strong advocate for state involvement in scientific inquiry, he also felt that his general method should be applied directly to the functioning of the state as well. For Bacon, matters of policy were inseparable from philosophy and science. Bacon recognised the repetitive nature of history, and sought to correct it by making the future direction of government more rational. In order to make future civil history more linear and achieve real progress, he felt that methods of the past and experiences of the present should be examined together in order to determine the best ways by which to go about civil discourse. Bacon began one particular address to the house of Commons with a reference to the book of Jeremiah: "Stand in the ancient ways, but look also into present experience in order to see whether in the light of this experience ancient ways are right. If they are found to be so, walk in them." In short, he wanted his method of progress building on progress in natural philosophy to be integrated into England's political theory.[35]
Bacon's works include his Essays, as well as the Colours of Good and Evil and the Meditationes Sacrae, all published in 1597. (His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the Meditations.) He published Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human in 1605. Bacon also wrote In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, a eulogy for the queen written in 1609; and various philosophical works which constitute the fragmentary and incomplete Instauratio magna (Great Renewal), the most important part of which is the Novum Organum (New Instrument, published 1620); in this work he cites three world-changing inventions:
"Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries."[36]
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker have argued that Bacon was not as idealistic as his utopian works suggest, rather that he was what might today be considered an advocate of genocidal eugenics. A year prior to the release of New Atlantis, Bacon published an essay that reveals a version of himself not often seen in history. This essay, a lesser-known work entitled, An Advertisement Touching a Holy War, advocated the elimination of detrimental societal elements by the English and compared this to the endeavours of Hercules while establishing civilised society in ancient Greece. He saw the "extirpation and debellating of giants, monsters, and foreign tyrants, not only as lawful, but as meritorious, even divine honour..."[37]
Laurence Lampert has interpreted Bacon's treatise An Advertisement Touching a Holy War as advocating "spiritual warfare against the spiritual rulers of European civilisation."[38]
In 1623, Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideals in New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" were the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of Bensalem. In this work, he portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organisation of his ideal college, "Salomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science. There has been much speculation as to whether a real island society inspired Bacon's utopia. Scholars have suggested numerous countries, from Iceland to Japan; Dr. Nick Lambert highlighted the latter in The View Beyond.[39]
The Novum Organum is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon published in 1620. The title is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. In Novum Organum, Bacon detailed a new system of logic he believed to be superior to the old ways of syllogism. In this work, we see the development of the Baconian method, consisting of procedures for isolating the formal cause of a phenomenon (heat, for example) through eliminative induction.
Bacon's ideas were influential in the 1630s and 1650s among scholars, in particular Sir Thomas Browne, who in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–1672) frequently adheres to a Baconian approach to his scientific enquiries. During the Restoration, Bacon was commonly invoked as a guiding spirit of the Royal Society founded under Charles II in 1660.[40][41] In the nineteenth century his emphasis on induction was revived and developed by William Whewell, among others.[42]
Some scholars[who?] believe that Bacon's vision for a Utopian New World in North America was laid out in his novel New Atlantis, which depicts a mythical island, Bensalem, located somewhere between Peru and Japan. He envisioned a land where there would be greater rights for women,[citation needed] the abolition of slavery, elimination of debtors' prisons, separation of church and state, and freedom of religious and political expression.[43][44][45][46] Francis Bacon played a leading role in creating the British colonies, especially in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Newfoundland in northeastern Canada. He has been connected to the mysterious Oak Island buried treasure.[citation needed][dubious ] His government report on “The Virginia Colony” was submitted in 1609. In 1610 Bacon and his associates received a charter from the king to form the Tresurer and the Companye of Adventurers and planter of the Cittye of london and Bristoll for the Collonye or plantacon in Newfoundland[47] and sent John Guy to found a colony there. In 1910 Newfoundland issued a postage stamp to commemorate Bacon's role in establishing the province. The stamp describes Bacon as, "the guiding spirit in Colonization Schemes in 1610."[15] Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States wrote: "Bacon, Locke and Newton. I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences".[48]
The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship, first proposed in the mid-19th century, contends that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare, in opposition to the scholarly consensus that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the author.
Francis Bacon often gathered with the men at Gray's Inn to discuss politics and philosophy, and to try out various theatrical scenes that he admitted writing.[49] Bacon's alleged connection to the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons has been widely discussed by authors and scholars in many books.[50] However others, including Daphne du Maurier (in her biography of Bacon), have argued there is no substantive evidence to support claims of involvement with the Rosicrucians.[51] Frances Yates[52] does not make the claim that Bacon was a Rosicrucian, but presents evidence that he was nevertheless involved in some of the more closed intellectual movements of his day. She argues that Bacon's movement for the advancement of learning was closely connected with the German Rosicrucian movement, while Bacon's New Atlantis portrays a land ruled by Rosicrucians. He apparently saw his own movement for the advancement of learning to be in conformity with Rosicrucian ideals.[53]
Francis Bacon's influence can also be seen on a variety of religious and spiritual authors, and on groups that have utilised his writings in their own belief systems.[54][55][56][57][58]
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Francis Bacon |
Many of Bacon's writings were only published after his death in 1626.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Bacon,
Francis".
Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, And Viscount St. Alban".
A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London:
J. M. Dent & Sons.
Wikisource| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir Thomas Egerton |
Lord High Chancellor 1617–1621 |
Succeeded by In Commission |
| Preceded by Henry Hobart |
Attorney General of England and Wales 1613–1617 |
Succeeded by Henry Yelverton |
| Parliament of England | ||
| Preceded by Miles Sandys |
Member of
Parliament for
Taunton 1586–1588 |
Succeeded by William Aubrey |
| Preceded by Arthur Atye |
Member of
Parliament for
Liverpool 1588–1594 |
Succeeded by Thomas Gerard |
| Preceded by William Fleetwood |
Member of
Parliament for
Middlesex 1594–1598 |
Succeeded by Sir John Peyton |
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THE FRANCIS BACON - SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY
The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship holds that Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, essayist and scientist, wrote the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare, and that the historical Shakespeare was merely a front to shield the identity of Bacon, who could not take credit for the works because being known as a lowly playwright for the public stage would have impeded his ambition to hold high office.
Bacon was the first alternative candidate suggested as the true author of Shakespeare's plays. 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. All but a few academic Shakespeare scholars reject the arguments for Bacon authorship, as well as those for all other alternative authors.
The Baconian theory gained great popularity and attention in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, although since the mid-twentieth century the primacy of his candidacy as the true author of the Shakespeare canon has been supplanted by that of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Despite the academic consensus that Shakespeare wrote the works bearing his name and the decline of the theory, supporters of Bacon continue to argue for his candidacy through organizations, books, newsletters, and websites.
Sir Francis Bacon was a major scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618). Those who subscribe to the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare work generally refer to themselves as "Baconians", while dubbing those who maintain the orthodox view that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote them "Stratfordians".
Baptised as "Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere" (William son of John Shakspere), the traditionally-accepted author used several variants of his surname during his lifetime, including "Shakespeare". Baconians use "Shakspere"[1] 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 work.
A pamphlet entitled The Story of the Learned Pig (c1786) and alleged research by James Wilmot have been claimed to be the earliest instances of the claim that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's work, but the Wilmot research has been exposed as a forgery and the pamphlet makes no reference to Bacon.[2]
The idea was first proposed by Delia Bacon 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[3] published in the form of a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays?[4] Smith suggested that several letters to and from Francis Bacon that apparently hinted at his authorship. A year later, both Smith and Delia Bacon published books expounding the Baconian theory, though in Delia Bacon's model Francis worked in collaboration with other writers and scholars.[5][6] In the latter 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-monarchial system of philosophy by secreting it in the text.
In 1867, in the library of Northumberland House, one John Bruce happened upon a bundle of bound documents, some of whose sheets had been ripped away. It had comprised numerous of Bacon's oratories and disquisitions, 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 Love's Labour's Lost and in 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 the Shakespeare.
After a diligent deciphering of the Elizabethan handwriting in Francis Bacon's wastebook, the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, Constance Mary Fearon Pott (1833–1915) noted that many of the ideas and figures of speech in Bacon's book could also be found in the Shakespearean plays. Pott founded the Francis Bacon Society in 1885 and published her Bacon-centered theory in 1891.[7] In this, Pott developed the view of W.F.C. Wigston,[8] 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 to their work. William Comyns Beaumont also popularized the notion of Bacon's authorship.
The late 19th-century interest in the Baconian theory continued the theme that Bacon had hidden encoded messages in the plays. In 1888, Ignatius L. Donnelly, a U.S. Congressman, science fiction author and Atlantis theorist, set out his notion of ciphers in The Great Cryptogram.
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 (1893–5) 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.[9] 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 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).[10][9] 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'".[11]
Much later the cryptographers William and Elizabeth Friedman, who spent many years with Mrs.Gallup, showed that the method is unlikely to have been employed.[12]
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.
Orville Ward Owen had such conviction in 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.
More recent Baconian theory ignores the esoteric following that the theory had earlier attracted.[13] Whereas, previously, the main proposed reason for secrecy was Bacon's desire for high office, this theory posits that his main motivation for concealment was the completion of his Great Instauration project.[14][15] The argument runs that, in order to advance the project's scientific component, he intended to set up new institutes of experimentation to gather the data (his scientific "Histories") to which his inductive method could be applied. He needed to attain high office, however, to gain the requisite influence,[16] and being known as a dramatist (a 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",[17] and being "strongly addicted to the theatre"[18] himself, he is claimed to have set out the otherwise-unpublished moral philosophical component of his Great Instauration project in the Shakespearean work (moral "Histories"). In this way, he could influence the nobility through dramatic performance with his observations on what constitutes "good" government (as in Prince Hal's relationship with the Chief Justice in Henry IV, Part 2).
It is known that, as early as 1595, Bacon employed scriveners,[19] which, one could argue, would protect his anonymity and account for Heminge and Condell, two actors in Shakspeare's company, remarking about Shakspere that "wee [sic] have scarce received from him a blot in his papers".[20] Baconians point out that Bacon's rise to the post of Attorney General in 1613 coincided with the end of Shakespeare the author's output. They also stress that the First Folio was published in a period (1621–1626) when Bacon was publishing his work for posterity after his fall from office gave him the free time.
Henry VIII (1613) may be interpreted as alluding to Bacon's fall from office in 1621, suggesting that the play had been altered at least five years after Shakspere's death in 1616. The argument relates to Cardinal Wolsey's forfeiture of the Great Seal in the play, which might be construed as departing from the facts of history to mirror Bacon's own loss. Bacon lost office on a charge of accepting bribes to influence his judgment of legal cases, whereas Wolsey's crime was to petition the Pope to delay sanctioning King Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Nevertheless, in 3.2.125-8, just before the Great Seal is reclaimed, King Henry's main concern is an inventory of Wolsey's wealth that has inadvertently been delivered to him:
A few lines later, Wolsey loses the Seal with the stage direction:
However, in history, only the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk performed this task,[21] and Shakespeare has inexplicably added the Earl of Surrey and the Lord Chamberlaine. In Bacon's case, King James "commissioned the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlaine, and the Earl of Arundel, to receive and take charge of it".[22] Given that Thomas Howard was the 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey, then the two noblemen that Shakespeare has added may be construed as references to two of the four that attended Bacon.
"If we must look for an author outside of Shakespeare himself," said Caldecott, "the only possible candidate that presents himself is Francis Bacon."[23] Proposed the illustrious Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness, "Had the plays come down to us anonymously – had the labour of discovering the author been imposed upon future generations – 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 upon his head by almost common consent."[24] "He was," agreed Caldecott, "all the things that the plays of Shakespeare demand that the author should be – a man of vast and boundless ambition and attainments, a philosopher, a poet, a lawyer, a statesman."[25]
In relation to the extensive vocabulary used in the plays, we have the words of Dr. Samuel Johnson, author of the first dictionary: "[... A] Dictionary of the English language might be compiled from Bacon's writing alone".[26] The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley testifies against the notion that Bacon's was an unwaveringly dry legal style: "Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his intellect satisfies the intellect [...]."[27] Ben Jonson writes in his First-Folio tribute to "The Author Mr William Shakespeare",
"There can be no doubt," said Caldecott, "that Ben Jonson was in possession of the secret composition of Shakespeare's works." An intimate of both Bacon and Shakespeare – he was for a time the former's stenographer and Latin interpreter, and had his debut as a playwright produced by the latter[28] – he was placed perfectly to be in the know. He did not name Shakespeare among the sixteen greatest cards of the epoch but wrote of Bacon that he "hath filled up all the numbers,[29] and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or to haughty Rome [...] so that he may be named, and stand as the mark[30] and acme of our language."[31] "If Ben Jonson knew that the name 'Shakespeare' was a mere cloak for Bacon, it is easy enough to reconcile the application of the same language indifferently to one and the other. Otherwise," declared Caldecott, "it is not easily explicable."[32]
Some time subsequent to Shakespeare's expiry, Jonson tackled the panoptic task of setting down the First Folio and casting away the originals. This was in 1623, when Bacon had lapsed into penury. Jonson would have been keen to allay his friend's straits, and the folio's yield would have fitted the bill nicely.
In 1645 a satirical poem was published entitled The Great Assizes Holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours. This describes an imaginary trial of recent writers for crimes against literature. Apollo presides at a trial. Bacon ("The Lord Verulam, Chancellor of Parnassus") heads a group of scholars who act as the judges. The jury comprises poets and playwrights, including "William Shakespere". One of the convicted "criminals" challenges the court, attacking the credentials of the jury, including Shakespeare who is called a mere "mimic".
That Bacon took a keen interest in civil history is evidenced in his book History of the Reign of Henry VII (1621), his article the Memorial of Elizabeth (1608) and his letter to King James in 1610, lobbying for financial support to indite a history of Great Britain: "I shall have the advantage which almost no writer of history hath had, in that I shall write of times not only since I could remember, but since I could observe."[33]
Bacon and Shake-speare cover completely the monarchs of the period 1377 to 1603 without duplicating one another's historical ground. In 1623, Bacon gave different excuses to Prince Charles for not working on a commissioned treatise on Henry VIII (which had already been covered by the Shake-speare play in 1613).[34] In the end, he wrote only two pages.
Numerous scholars[who?] believe that the main source for Shakespeare's The Tempest was a letter written by William Strachey known as the True Reportory (TR)[35] sent back to the Virginia Company from the newly established Virginia colony in 1610, about a year before the play's first known performance.[36] It was discovered when Richard Hakluyt, one of the eight names on the First Virginia Charter (1606), died in 1616 and a copy was found among his papers. Scholars have suggested that the letter was “circulated in manuscript”[37] without restriction and that “there seems to have been an opportunity for Shakespeare to see the unpublished report, or even to have met Strachey”.[38] However, Baconians point to evidence that the letter was restricted to members of the Virginia Council which included Sir Francis Bacon (and 50 other Lords and Earls) but not William Shakspere. For example, Item 27 of the governing Council’s instructions to Deputy Governor Sir Thomas Gates before he set out for the colony charges him to “take especial care what relacions [accounts] come into England and what lettres are written and that all thinges of that nature may be boxed up and sealed and sent to first of [sic] the Council here, ... and that at the arrivall and retourne of every shippinge you endeavour to knowe all the particular passages and informacions given on both sides and to advise us accordingly."[39] Louis B. Wright explains why the Virginia Company was so keen to control information: “[the TR gave] a discouraging picture of Jamestown, but it is significant that it had to wait fifteen years to see print, for the Virginia Company just at that time was subsidising preachers and others to give glowing descriptions of Virginia and its prospects".[40] Baconians argue that it would have been against the interests of any Council member, whose investment was at risk, to present a copy of the TR to Shakspere, whose business was public.
On November 1610, conscious that the criticisms of the returning colonists might jeopardise the recruitment of new settlers and investment, the Virginia Company published the propagandist True Declaration (TD) which was designed to confute “such scandalous reports as have tended to the disgrace of so worthy an enterprise” and was intended to “wash away those spots, which foul mouths (to justify their own disloyalty) have cast upon so fruitful, so fertile, and so excellent a country”.[41] The TD relied on the TR and other minor sources and it is clear from its use of “I” that it had a single author. There are also verbal parallels between (a) the TD, and (b) Bacon's Advancement of Learning[42] that suggest that Sir Francis Bacon as Solicitor General might have written the TD and so, by implication, had access to the TR which sourced The Tempest. Some examples of these are presented together with their correspondence to (c) the Shake-speare work.
Parallel 1
Parallel 2
Parallel 3
William Strachey went on to write The History of Travel into Virginia Britannica, a book that avoided duplicating the details of the TR. First published in 1849, three manuscript copies survive dedicated to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland; Sir William Apsley, Purveyor of his Majesty’s Navy Royal; and Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor. In the dedication to Bacon, which must have been composed after he became Lord Chancellor in 1618, Strachey writes “Your Lordship ever approving himself a most noble fautor [supporter] of the Virginia Plantation, being from the beginning (with other lords and earls) of the principal counsel applied to propagate and guide it”.[43]
The 1610–11 dating of The Tempest however, has been challenged by a number of scholars, most recently by researchers Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky[44] who argue that Strachey's narrative could not have furnished an inspiration for Shakespeare, claiming that Strachey's letter was not put into its extant form until after The Tempest had already been performed on 1 Nov. 1611. The notion of an early date for The Tempest has in fact a long history in Shakespearean scholarship, going back to 19th century scholars such as Hunter[45] and Elze,[46] who both critiqued the widespread belief that the play depended on the Strachey letter. However, the cogency of their work has been challenged by Vaughan[47] and Reedy[48] who reaffirm the Strachey letter's use a source for The Tempest.
Gray's Inn law school traditionally held revels over Christmas: dancing and feasting were complemented by plays and masques. The evidence suggests that, prior to the revels of 1594 and '95, all performed plays were amateur productions.[49] In his commentary on the Gesta Grayorum, a contemporary account of the 1594–95 revels, Desmond Bland[50] informs us that they were "intended as a training ground in all the manners that are learned by nobility [...:] dancing, music, declamation, acting." James Spedding, the Victorian editor of Bacon's Works, thought that Sir Francis Bacon was involved in the writing of this account.[51]
The Gesta Grayorum[52] is a pamphlet of 68 pages first published in 1688. It informs us that The Comedy of Errors received its first known performance at these revels at 21:00 on 28 December 1594 (Innocents Day) when "a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the Players [...]." Whoever the players were, there is evidence that Shakespeare and his company were not among them: according to the royal Chamber accounts, dated 15 March 1595 – see Figure[53] – he and the Lord Chamberlain's Men were performing for the Queen at Greenwich on Innocents Day. E.K. Chambers[54] informs us that "the Court performances were always at night, beginning about 10pm and ending at 1am", so their presence at both performances is highly unlikely; furthermore, the Gray's Inn Pension Book, which recorded all payments made by the Gray's Inn committee, exhibits no payment either to a dramatist or to professional company for this play.[55] Baconians interpret this as a suggestion that, following precedent, The Comedy of Errors was both written and performed by members of the Inns of Court as part of their participation in the Gray's Inn celebrations. One problem with this argument is that the Gesta Grayorum refers to the players as "a Company of base and common fellows",[56] which would apply well to a professional theatre company, but not to law students. But, given the jovial tone of the Gesta, and that the description occurred during a skit in which a "Sorcerer or Conjuror" was accused of causing "disorders with a play of errors or confusions", Baconians interpret it as merely a comic description of the Gray's Inn players.
Gray's Inn actually had a company of players during the revels. The Gray's Inn Pension Book records on 11 February 1595 that "one hyndred marks [£66.67] [are] to be layd out & bestowyd upon the gentlemen for their sports and shewes this Shrovetyde at the court before the Queens Majestie ...."[57]
There is, most importantly to the Baconians' argument, evidence that Bacon had control over the Gray's Inn players. In a letter either to Lord Burghley, dated before 1598, or to the Earl of Somerset in 1613,[58] he writes, "I am sorry the joint masque from the four Inns of Court faileth [.... T]here are a dozen gentlemen of Gray's Inn that will be ready to furnish a masque".[59][verification needed] The dedication to a masque by Francis Beaumont performed at Whitehall in 1613 describes Bacon as the "chief contriver" of its performances at Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple.[60] He also appears to have been their treasurer prior to the 1594–95 revels.[61]
The discrepancy surrounding the whereabouts of the Chamberlain's Men is normally explained by theatre historians as an error in the Chamber Accounts. W.W. Greg suggested the following explanation:
The final paragraph of the Gesta Grayorum – see Figure – uses a "greater lessens the smaller" construction that occurs in an exchange from the Merchant of Venice (1594–97), 5.1.92–7:
The Merchant of Venice uses both the same theme as the Gesta Grayorum (see Figure) and the same three examples to illustrate it – a subject obscured by royalty, a small light overpowered by that of a heavenly body and a river diluted on reaching the sea. In an essay[63] from 1603, Bacon makes further use of two of these examples: "The second condition [of perfect mixture] is that the greater draws the less. So we see that when two lights do meet, the greater doth darken and drown the less. And when a small river runs into a greater, it loseth both the name and stream." A figure similar to "loseth both the name and stream" occurs in Hamlet (1600–01), 3.1.87–8:
Bacon was usually careful to cite his sources but does not mention Shakespeare once in any of his work. Baconians claim, furthermore, that, if the Gesta Grayorum was circulated prior to its publication in 1688 – and no one seems to know if it was – it was probably only among members of the Inns of Court.[citation needed]
In the 19th century, a notebook entitled the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies[64] was discovered. It contained 1,655 hand written proverbs, metaphors, aphorisms, salutations and other miscellany. Although some entries appear original, many are drawn from the Latin and Greek writers Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Ovid; John Heywood's Proverbes (1562); Michel de Montaigne's Essays (1575), and various other French, Italian and Spanish sources. A section at the end aside, the writing was, by Sir Edward Maunde-Thompson's reckoning, in Bacon's hand; indeed, his signature appears on folio 115 verso. Only two folios of the notebook were dated, the third sheet (5 December 1594) and the 32nd (27 January 1595 [that is, 1596]). Many of these entries also appear in Shakespeare's First Folio:
Parallel 1
Parallel 2
Parallel 3
The orthodox view is that these were commonplace phrases; Baconians claim the occurrence in the last two examples of two ideas from the same Promus folio in the same Shakespeare speech is unlikely.[citation needed]
There is an example in Troilus and Cressida (2.2.163) which shows that Bacon and Shakespeare shared the same interpretation of an Aristotelian view:
Bacon's similar take reads thus: "Is not the opinion of Aristotle very wise and worthy to be regarded, 'that young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy', because the boiling heat of their affections is not yet settled, nor tempered with time and experience?"[65]
What Aristotle actually said was slightly different: "Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; [...] and further since he tends to follow his passions his study will be vain and unprofitable [...]."[66] The added coincidence of heat and passion and the replacement of "political science" with "moral philosophy" is employed by both Shakespeare and Bacon. However, Shakespeare's play precedes Bacon's publication, allowing the possibility of the latter borrowing from the former.
Spedding suggests that lines in Macbeth refer to Sir Walter Raleigh's execution, which occurred two years after Shakespeare of Stratford's death and fourteen years after the Earl of Oxford's.[67] The lines in question are spoken by Malcolm about the execution of the "disloyall traytor [sic] / The Thane of Cawdor" (1.2.53):
Several sources have remarked upon Raleigh's frivolity in the face of his impending execution[68][69] and the assertion that "[the Commission who tried him] are not yet come back" could refer to the fact that his execution was swift: it took place the day after his trial for treason.[70] Raphael Holinshed, the main source for Macbeth, mentions "the thane of Cawder [sic] being condemned at Fores of treason against the king"[71] without further details about his execution, so whoever wrote the lines in the play went beyond the original source.
In Raleigh's trial at Winchester on 17 November 1603, his statement was read out: "Lord Cobham offered me 10,000 crowns for the furthering the peace between England and Spain".[72] In 1.2.60-4 of Macbeth, the King's messenger reports on the king of Norway, who has been assisted by the thane of Cawdor:
Shake-speare was known for his use of anagrams (e.g. the character Moth in Love's Labour's Lost represents Thomas Nashe)[73] and here he has altered Cawder to Cawdor, an anagram of "coward". Some Baconians see this as an allusion to Raleigh's poem the night before his execution.[citation needed]
Some scholars[75] believe that Macbeth was later altered by Middleton, but a reference to Raleigh's execution would be particularly advantageous to the Baconian theory because Bacon was one of the six Commissioners from the Privy Council appointed to examine Raleigh's case.[76]
But more than one Elizabethan traitor put on a brave show for his execution. In 1793, George Steevens suggested that the speech was an allusion to the death of the Earl of Essex in 1601 (a date that does not conflict with Shakespeare's or Oxford's authorship): "The behaviour of the thane of Cawdor corresponds in almost every circumstance with that of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, as related by Stow, p. 793. His asking the Queen's forgiveness, his confession, repentance, and concern about behaving with propriety on the scaffold are minutely described."[77] As Steevens notes, Essex was a close friend of Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton.[78] Essex also employed Bacon as an adviser in the latter's early career in Parliament, until Essex fell out of favour and was prosecuted with Bacon's help.
Most editors of Macbeth simply assume the speech to be fictional and not a deliberate allusion to a specific event.
Mainstream Stratfordian academics reject the Baconian theory (along with other "alternative authorship" theories), citing a range of evidence – not least of all its reliance on a conspiracy theory. As far back as 1879, a New York Herald scribe bemoaned the waste of "considerable blank ammunition [...] in this ridiculous war between the Baconians and the Shakespearians",[79] while Richard Garnett declared that "Baconians talk as if Bacon had nothing to do but to write his play at his chambers and send it to his factotum, Shakespeare, at the other end of the town."[80]
Mainstream academics reject the anti-Stratfordian claim[81] that Shakespeare had not the education to write the plays. Shakespeare grew up in a family of some importance in Stratford; his father John Shakespeare, one of the wealthiest men in Stratford, was an Alderman and later High Bailiff of the corporation. It would be surprising had he not attended the local grammar school, as such institutions were founded to educate boys of Shakespeare's moderately well-to-do standing.[82]
Stratfordian scholars[who?] also cite Occam's razor, the principle that the simplest and best-evidenced explanation (in this case that the plays were written by Shakespeare of Stratford) is most likely to be the correct one. A critique of all alternative authorship theories may be found in Samuel Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives.[83] Questioning Bacon's ability as a poet, Sidney Lee asserted: "[...] such authentic examples of Bacon's efforts to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare."[84]
At least one Stratfordian scholar claims Bacon privately disavowed the idea he was a poet, and, seen in the context of Bacon's philosophy, the 'concealed poet' is something other than a dramatic or narrative poet.[85] A mainstream historian of authorship doubt, Frank Wadsworth, asserted that the 'essential pattern of the Baconian argument' consisted of:
'expressed dissatisfaction with the number of historical records of Shakespeare's career, followed by the substitution of a wealth of imaginative conjectures in their place.'[86]
Ciphers of Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon and his Rosicrucian fraternity made use of several different kinds and types of cipher, some of them to sign various published works issued outwardly under different names or pseudonyms, and some of them to give messages or teachings.
Francis himself was a secretive person both by choice and by necessity. He learnt the use of ciphers early in his youth when he was employed by Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham, on behalf of the Queen, on intelligence matters both at home and abroad. Francis’ brother Anthony likewise was employed on intelligence matters and was sent as an intelligencer to France and elsewhere for over twelve years. When Anthony finally returned to England in 1592 Francis ‘knit’ his services to Essex, by request of the Queen. Anthony thereafter acted as a virtual ‘Secretary of State’ to the Earl, running his own network of spies and, with the help of Francis, feeding both the Earl and the Queen with intelligence.
Francis Bacon not only used cipher but also invented several ciphers of his own, one of which he describes in Book VI of the 1623 Latin edition of his Advancement of Learning (the De Augmentis Scientiarum, first published in English translation in 1640). This particular cipher he calls the Biliteral Cipher, which he says he invented in his youth whilst in Paris (1576-9). From the principles of this cipher Morse Code was later developed and ultimately the binary system that computers use nowadays.
The simplest of the ciphers used by Francis Bacon and his Rosicrucian fraternity were numerical ones, wherein each letter of the alphabet has an equivalent numerical value. This is an ancient cabalistic cipher method, used in both the Hebraic Old Testament and the Greek New Testament for instance, but which has many possible variations. One which is recorded in Bacon’s time is the Latin Cabala, adopted in Italy in 1621 by a circle of literary ecclesiastics, who established it on the occasion of the left arm of the blessed Conrad—a famous hermit—being brought with ceremony from Netina to Piacenza. (The record of this is in a rare pamphlet entitled Anathemata B. Conrado, issued in Placentia in 1621.) There are two versions of this Latin Cabala described, one ‘Simple’ and the other ‘Ordinary’, the ‘Simple’ having twenty-two letters for its alphabet and the ‘Ordinary’ having twenty-three (the letter ‘K’ being added).
Bacon’s cabalistic ciphers are very similar to the Latin Cabala, but based on the twenty-four letters of the Elizabethan alphabet rather than the twenty-two or twenty-three of the Latin Cabala. Three main variations are used—the Simple Cipher, the Reverse Cipher and the Kay (i.e. the ‘K’ or Key) Cipher. There are two variations of the Kay Cipher and it is the second one which is the most important and used, for instance, in the Shakespeare Folio of plays.
The basic Simple Cipher (i.e. A = 1, B = 2, …Z = 24) is illustrated on page 141 in Gustavus Selenus’ great cipher book, Cryptomenitices et Cryptogaphiae, published in Germany in 1624. This Simple Cipher was developed by Francis Bacon into what he called a four-fold structure, in which the twenty-four letter alphabet is repeated four times so that the corresponding numbers continue to 96 (i.e. 4 x 24) and each of the numbers/letters in the four sets relates both to a Greek letter and word, and also to an element or celestial body. Francis left a record of this cipher for posterity, to be published eventually by ‘T.T.’ (who is usually assumed to be Archbishop Thomas Tenison) in his Baconiana of 1679 under the title of Abecedarium Naturae (‘The Alphabet of Nature’).
Kay Ciphers are first mentioned by Francis Bacon in his 1605 version of the Advancement of Learning, but not described. In his 1623 Latin edition (the De Augmentis Scientiarum) he refers to them as the ‘Ciphrae Clavis’ (Key Ciphers). The Baconian, Mr. W. E. Clifton, discovered the working of this cipher with the help of two particular volumes from his collection of 17th century books—Thomas Powell’s The Repertorie of Records (1631) and a special edition of Rawley’s Resuscitatio (1671) of Bacon’s works—which alerted him to the fact that the cipher uses the twenty-six characters of the old alphabet primers, in which the Ampersand (‘&’) followed by ‘et’ was added to the twenty-four letter alphabet, and that K (which starts the counting) equals 10. Since the numbers 25 and 26 (which correspond to the ‘&’ and ‘et’) are treated as nulls, then A equals 27, B equals 28, etc..
The Reverse Cipher is simply the Simple Cipher in reverse (i.e. A = 24, B = 23, …Z = 1), and its use seems to be as an occasional double-check to the veracity of cipher signatures in the other two main cabalistic ciphers.
SIMPLE CIPHER
|
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
I |
K |
L |
M |
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
|
N |
O |
P |
Q |
R |
S |
T |
V |
W |
X |
Y |
Z |
|
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
REVERSE CIPHER
|
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
I |
K |
L |
M |
|
24 |
23 |
22 |
21 |
20 |
19 |
18 |
17 |
16 |
15 |
14 |
13 |
|
N |
O |
P |
Q |
R |
S |
T |
V |
W |
X |
Y |
Z |
|
12 |
11 |
10 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
KAY CIPHER (2)
|
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
I |
K |
L |
M |
|
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
32 |
33 |
34 |
35 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
|
N |
O |
P |
Q |
R |
S |
T |
V |
W |
X |
Y |
Z |
|
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
The principal cabalistic signatures used on monuments and in the various published works of Francis Bacon or ‘Shakespeare’, or the Rosicrucian fraternity in relationship to Bacon-Shakespeare, are as follows:-
BACONIAN CIPHER SIGNATURES
|
Signature |
Simple |
Kay |
Reverse |
|
Francis |
67 |
171 |
108 |
|
Bacon |
33 |
111 |
92 |
|
Francis Bacon |
100 |
282 |
200 |
|
Fra. Rosi. Crosse |
157 |
287 |
168 |
Fra. Rosi. Crosse stands for ‘Fratres Rosi Crosse’ (Brothers of the Rosy Cross) or ‘Frater Rosi Cross’ (Brother of the Rosy Cross). Other cabalistic signatures based on Francis Bacon’s titles are also used. See Francis Bacon’s Cipher Signatures by Frank Woodward (1923) for a detailed study.
The cipher signature method is unusual in that it often uses a count of letters per word per column (or page), or else of the number of words per column (or page), or both, to give the cipher signature. As Bacon stated in his Advancement of Learning (1605), ‘For Cyphars; they are commonly in Letters or Alphabets, but may be in Wordes’.
For instance, in Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (1640) there are 287 letters on the Frontispiece page, 287 letters on the Dedication page, and 287 letters on page 215, which is falsely numbered and should in reality be page 287, just to make sure we get the message. Each of these key pages is therefore signed Fra. Rosi. Crosse in Kay Cipher.
Ben Jonson’s Portrait Poem on the first page of the 1623 Shakespeare Folio has 287 letters, the count of Fra. Rosi. Crosse in Kay Cipher. The title-page of the Folio, containing Shakespeare's portrait, has 157 letters in its words, the count of Fra. Rosi. Crosse in Simple Cipher. The first page of the Dedication in the Shakespeare Folio has 157 words in italic font, the count of Fra. Rosi. Crosse in Simple Cipher. The Catalogue of plays has exactly 100 Roman letters on the full page, and 100 complete italic words in its second column, the count of Francis Bacon in Simple Cipher. The page also has 111 capitals in italic font, the count of Francis Bacon in Kay Cipher. The first page of the Comedies, (i.e. the first page of The Tempest) in the Shakespeare Folio has 287 words in regular font in its second column, whilst its first column has 100 italic font letters (actors’ character names discounted) and 257 words in regular font. 100 = Francis Bacon (Simple Cipher), whilst 257 – 100 = 157 = Fra Rosi Crosse (Simple Cipher). That is to say, 257 = 100 + 157 = Francis Bacon, Fra Rosi Crosse.
The eight main lines of text on the inscription of the Shakespeare Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon has 287 letters (i.e. Fra. Rosi. Crosse in Kay Cipher) in its 50 complete words. 50 has a highly significant meaning in the cabalistic cipher system (see below), and at the same time is the number of the Argonauts, the symbolism of which Bacon uses to describe his seekers after truth—the Rosicrucian fraternity. (N.B. The ship Argo is prominently shown on several title-pages of his works.) Complementing this, the garbled quotation on the scroll of the Shakespeare Memorial in Westminster Abbey is made up of 33 complete words (i.e. Bacon in Simple Cipher) containing 157 letters (i.e. Fra Rosi Crosse in Simple Cipher), whereas the original six lines from The Tempest (Act 4, scene 1) in the Shakespeare Folio from which the Memorial quotation is derived are composed of 40 words containing 167 letters. The Westminster Abbey memorial was erected in 1741, but the project was launched in 1726— the centenary of Bacon's death.
Francis Bacon’s first name, Francis, means ‘Free’. He used this both as a teaching and as a cipher signature, for Free = 33 = Bacon (Simple), or Free = 67 = Francis (Reverse), or Free = 111 = Bacon (Kay). ‘Free’ also has the connotation of Master and was used in the Orphic Mysteries to hail the resurrected initiate as ‘Liber Bacchus!’ (‘Bacchus the Free!’) and in the Vedic teachings as the title of the Master (i.e. Jivanmukta, ‘the Free’). The English word ‘free’ is from the Sanskrit root pri, meaning ‘to love’, and so fundamentally Free = Love. (e.g. Freemason means ‘Builder of Love’ or ‘Loving Builder’). In both Simple and Reverse Cipher Love = 50, the number of the Argonauts. In the 1623 Shakespeare Folio Francis Bacon signs the very first play of the Folio, The Tempest, with this signature, for the text begins with ‘Master’ and ends with ‘Free’. It is especially meaningful as the play is all about attaining true mastery as a Master of love, a Master of compassion, with the help of Ariel, the spirit of love, which Prospero has set free.
The full signature, Francis Bacon, counts to 100, divided neatly into thirds by Francis (33) and Bacon (67), providing a fundamental (1:1), an octave (1:2) and a fifth (2:3) in music. 100 is the cabalistic number of universality, used for instance as the overall measure of the Globe Theatre, which is 100 feet in diameter. 33 is the number of the personal master (e.g. Jesus was said to be 33 years old at his crucifixion and resurrection)—the first stage of universal mastership. 100 is the number of the universal master, the fully ascended soul of love, enthroned in heaven.
33 is also represented by the initials ‘T.T.’ (i.e. Thirty-Three). As such it is used to represent the Thirty-Third Degree of Initiation, and thus is used as a sign or signature of the master. Like the initials ‘B.I.’—which sign the Shakespeare Folio’s Portrait poem and represent the names of Solomon’s Pillars, Boaz and Jachin, as well as being the initials of Ben Jonson—‘T.T.’ also signifies the Twin Pillars that stand before the porch of Solomon’s Temple, the Temple of Light. ‘T.T.’ forms the capital letters of The Tempest, the introductory play of the Shakespeare Folio. The Dedication in Shake-speare's Sonnets (1609) is signed ‘T.T.’ (which, like ‘B.I’ in the Folio, is also associated with an appropriate person—in this case, Thomas Thorpe). The signature of ‘T.T.’ is carved into the base of the Shakespeare Memorial in Westminster Abbey, at Shakespeare's feet. The collection of Bacon’s previously unpublished writings that were published in 1679 under the title of Baconiana, in which the keys to Bacon’s cabalistic cipher are given, is signed ‘T.T.’, which initials are generally assumed to be those of Archbishop Thomas Tennison, the ‘appropriate person’ as editor or front man for those responsible for preserving and publishing Bacon’s manuscripts.
‘AA’ is likewise an important signature of the Rosicrucian fraternity, used since the time of the Ancient Egyptians. It represents the polarity of all life—the Creator and Created, as well as the Alpha and Omega. Moreover, Apollo and Athena, the two Spear-Shakers, also stand for this Double A sign, or the Double A sign stands for them. The Double A was used as a headpiece in several books of the Rosicrucian fraternity, mostly during Bacon’s time. It is used, for instance, to head certain pages in the Shakespeare Folio, as also in Bacon’s philosophical works.
The ‘AA’ headpiece used in the Shakespeare Folio has within it two conies (rabbits) squatting back to back, giving the rebus signature of back-cony. ‘Baconi’ is one of the ways in which Bacon’s name was used in Latin editions of his acknowledged works: for instance, the very first work of his published in Latin, De Sapientia Veterum (1609), has ‘Francisci Baconi’ on its title-page (meaning ‘of’ or ‘by Francis Bacon’), as also his Latin Opera (1638) and Opuscula Varia Posthuma (1658). Its cabalistic cipher is used frequently, Fra Baconi counting to 66 in Simple Cipher and 222 in Kay Cipher, exactly double the values of Bacon in Simple and Kay respectively.
The boar, a symbol of Apollo, the divine swineherd, is said to imprint the ground with the sign of ‘AA’. The boar is Bacon’s heraldic animal, referred to cryptically in Mistress Quickly’s line in The Merry Wives of Windsor (iv, i.), ‘Hang-hog is latten for Bacon, I warrant you’. This ‘parable’ is from a story told about Sir Nicholas Bacon, Francis Bacon’s father, which Francis records in his Apophthegm 10, published in Resuscitatio (1671): ‘….Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged.’
This is a sample of straight-forward Baconian ciphers, cabalistic and symbolic, which provide the signatures of Francis Bacon and the Rosicrucian fraternity, of which he was the President. Some other Baconian ciphers have also been discovered and are in the process of being researched, such as those which are based on the Cardano Grille, a cipher method invented by Geronimo Cardano (1501-1576) and adapted by Francis Bacon, Caesar ciphers, a logarithmic cipher, and others.
© Peter Dawkins, FBRT, 1999
Recommended reading:
Frank Woodward, Francis Bacon’s Cipher
Signatures (London: Grafton, 1923).
Ewen MacDuff, The Sixty-Seventh Inquisition (Shoreham, England:
Eric-Faulkner-Little, 1973).
Ewen MacDuff, The Dancing Horse Will Tell You (Shoreham, England:
Eric-Faulkner-Little, 1974).
Penn Leary, The.Cryptographic.Shakespeare. (Omaha, USA:
Westchester House, 1987).
Peter Dawkins, Arcadia (England: FBRT, 1988).
Peter Dawkins, ‘AI and the Boar’, The Master, Pt 2 (England:
FBRT, 1993).
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