WHY THE SHAKESPEARE HOAX IS SO IMPORTANT
Foul Deeds Will Rise
The action of the theatre… was carefully watched by the ancients…. and, indeed, many wise men and great philosophers have thought it to the mind as the bow to the fiddle: and certain it is that the minds of men in company are more open to affections and impressions than when alone. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. 1605.
“Taught in schools across the Empire, Shakespeare's work helped to imbue a sense of cultural patriotism in the Empire’s subjects. In 1841 Thomas Carlyle described Shakespeare as a “real, marketable, tangibly useful possession.” Critics have argued this was a way the British Empire tried to subordinate the cultures of the countries it occupied. Shakespeare continues to be exported, adapted and translated, across the world.” BBC Teach
“All the world’s a stage”. Motto of the Globe Theater
Right This Way To The Way Of The World
If it had been known that the real author of the Shakespeare plays was not a country bumpkin from Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of a leather worker with little or no education, but was instead a man who attended Trinity College, spoke multiple languages, served at the top of the Tudor and Stuart governments, had close ties to Queen Elizabeth, was a statesman and Lord Chancellor who knew every single person of any stature in London, was famous in his own time as a philosopher of Science who corresponded with Galileo and inspired Descartes, it then follows as night follows day that the plays would have been experienced and interpreted in a completely different way. I will explain how disguising the true author of the plays was critical to “Shakespeare’s” enormous global success. They made the Stratford man Mythic, turning the Mythic man from Stratford into the focus of worship for a new religion. Shakespeare became England itself. The Mythic Stratford authorship Hoax was, believe it or not and as the evidence shows, connected by Freemasonry to modern Science. Together the three- Shakespeare, Freemasonry and Science were designed to create a Gnostic Empire where Man replaces God, exactly as we are seeing today on the world stage, where “Trust In Science” has replaced “Trust In God”. Incredibly, one man designed all three new religions. He is, as has been rumored for over 400 years, the true author of the Shakespeare plays. He is known today mostly as the “father of modern science” and also as the “the patron saint of the Enlightenment”. (10) He prophesied modern technocracy in his fable New Atlantis and he created transhumanism with his Rosicrucian Hoax. He is Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Baron Verulam of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and he is the smartest and most influential man of all time. The Baron created modern Freemasonry as the glue to hold it all together and make it global. All the world’s a stage. Today’s globalism literally began with Freemasonry. (14) The earliest sustained symbolism of modern Freemasonry is found in Shakespeare. Science was the power, the technological advantage, the guns and the steel. “Knowledge IS Power” is Baron Verulam’s most famous quotation. Along with John Dee, Walsingham, Burleigh and a few others, Bacon accomplished this incredible feat from the heart of British Intelligence at it’s very origin. The philospher was a spy. By hiding the real author of the Shakespeare plays, a hoax so great and so profound was created as to generate the creation of the British Empire, making the Shakespeare Authorship hoax the mother of all hoaxes, and as such the Gnostic English Empire now lives in your head. It’s the strangest story never told.
Theater Of Hoaxes
It is now widely accepted and understood, even in England, that William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon did not write the plays attributed to him because the truth about the man from Stratford became impossible to suppress. Today, after close to 175 years of sustained controversy and the gathering of evidence it is has finally become widely known that Shakespeare did not write the plays, because word gotten out that William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon did not attend school; that his parents could not read; that his children could not read; that he wrote no letters nor received any letters; that he did not own any books; that not a single person recorded in a diary or a letter having worked with him on the plays or talked with him about writing the plays; that there is no record of him ever being paid for the plays; that no one in his hometown of Stratford knew that he was a poet; that the monument erected in his honor at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford originally showed him as a grain dealer; that there is not a single surviving shred of a manuscript from the plays, and not a single word anywhere in the man from Stratford genius’ own handwriting except six signatures, three of which are on his Last Will, and all six of which look to have been executed by a man unused to handling a pen. Despite this overwhelming evidence that William of Stratford-upon-Avon did not write the plays, proclaimed by such emminent thinkers as Emerson, Whitman, Henry James and Mark Twain, the belief that William Shakespeare did indeed write the plays, is now largely confined to academia.
The Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ), as it is called, has gone from a few 19thc American freethinkers like Delia Bacon (no relation) and Ralph Waldo Emerson to the world stage (!), with books being written about it even in Japan. True believers in the Myth of the Stratford Man Shakespeare Hoax are called “Stratfordians” in the ongoing debate. Stratfordians are arraigned against a now very large, highly educated and motivated group of “anti-Stratfordians”. The SAQ is now even being taught in a course at the University Of London, something unthinkable even 20 years ago when challenging the authorship of the plays would have resulted in immediate termination of your employment at any university. No CAP. Saying it meant you were crazy. 400 years ago you might have been drawn and quartered for treason had you proclaimed it loudly enough, because the hidden authorship of the Shakespeare plays was considered a state secret, and for good reason. The Shakespeare project was the secret weapon of Empire, both home and abroad.
As Mark Twain famously said “it is easier to fool someone than to convince someone they have been fooled”. (29) Twain’s last book, published in 1906, hilariously and strenuously argues that Shakespeare was an impostor, with Twain putting forth Francis Bacon as author. When one is shown the large body of evidence that William of Stratford was illiterate, as 80% of England was at the time, coupled with the extreme complexity of the plays, their saturation with literary and historical references spanning millennia, it is easy to became “anti-Stratfordian’, and perhaps begin to see as I do, that the phenomenon of Shakespeare is The Mother Of All Hoaxes that spawned many another hoax.
(NOTE: For newcomers to the Shakespeare Authorship Question: more ‘negative’ evidence for why William Shakespeare of Stratford could not possibly have written the world-famous plays go HERE. For some of the massive amount of evidence that Francis Bacon wrote the plays go HERE)
I argue, along with many others that Francis Bacon wrote the plays. (It is good to be in the same category as Mark Twain) Space and time do not permit me to make the argument for Bacon here but I will mention the smoking gun for us “Baconians” of the SAQ: a book called the Promus Notebook found in the British Library by a man named James Spedding, who was compiling the Collected Works of Francis Bacon in the 1860’s. This book contains a collection of sayings, proverbs and quotations and it appears to be a notebook that a writer might keep as a memory aid. With over 1,500 entries, all handwritten by Bacon, more than 600 of them have been found in the Shakespeare plays. Some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines are in the Promus Notebook, even such famous ones as “to thine own self be true” and “All’s Well That Ends Well”. Here is a link for more on the Promus, which means “storehouse’ in Latin, a language with which Bacon published many of his philosophical works. I’ll also mention that to anyone familiar with Bacon’s philosophical writing, it is clear that there are innumerable “parallels” in those writings to the ideas found in the plays. In fact the evidence for Bacon’s authorship is nearly endless. “Foul deeds will rise though all the earth overwhelm them to men’s eye’s”. Nice try at hiding it all Francis. Fail. I encourage everyone to follow the links above for more evidence. Or, listen to my podcast about it, where I bury you in Bacon.
If the worldly and hyper-educated Bacon was known to be the author, then the impact of the plays would have diminished exponentially: their hidden subtexts made clear, their secret symbolism meant for adepts exposed. (Bacon himself claimed that he wrote for 'adepts')(28) The alluring pull of mystery that the plays generate would have vanished.
The Birth Of A Myth
The plays needed a mythic, mysterious origin story in order to create their collective effect, an effect specifically designed to generate a unifying and great meta-Myth for all the people of Albion. The mysterious origin story of the the “sweet swan of Avon” whose poetry who was “not of an age, but for all time”, (25) going from rags to riches, to become more than the national poet: to become a national Myth, a symbol of England itself. A commoner with at best a grade school education, son of a leather worker, became the greatest poet and dramatist of all time in the entire world! This Myth was part of a new religion called Bardolatry, that sprung up around Shakespeare. Coincidentally or not, like Jesus of Nazareth the carpenter’s son, the author of the plays needed to be a small town lad, a son of a nobody who would rise to become known as a prophet. (1,2)
The religion of Shakespeare spread throughout England.
A starting point for the new religion (besides the First Folio, published in 1623, which is where the Myth of mysterious genius began) was the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769. Worship of the Myth reached a peak at the height of the British Empire in the early 1900’s. (17) Although during that time an American woman named Delia Bacon, was loudly and quite effectively expressing doubt in the Myth armed with her 700 page book and the friendship of Whitman, Emerson and Hawthorn, it was no matter. It was too late. Delia wound up in a mental institution. The Myth Of Shakespeare was too grand, too perfect. The Myth had done it’s work. It had created an Empire. As Thomas Carlyle points out above, the Empire even spread the new religion all over the world it had so effectively conquered England.
The Power Of Myth: To Make A Man Into A Demi-God
Myth has tremendous power. A myth is not a lie but a lie can become a myth. Our culture has combined the words myth and lie. They are very different things. Myth lives in mystery, a lie lives in secrecy.
This compelling Myth of Shakespeare began with the elaborate hoax in the introduction to the First Folio, published in 1623 now known as the “most influential book ever written in English”. This is where poems about Shakespeare were written by among others Ben Johnson, the highly regarded and brilliant playwright who was a close friend of Francis Bacon’s.
It was the first book dedicated solely to printed plays in the prestigious folio format, a size usually reserved for important religious texts like Bibles and collections of sermons. This format lent a sense of gravitas and importance to Shakespeare's works, marking them out as more than mere entertainments and establishing them as a foundational part of English literature with the 36 plays, claiming that William Shakespeare, the “sweet swan of Avon” wrote them, which was an elaborate lie. Here the hoax began, a hoax so well done that soon a world encompassing Myth of the exceptional genius of William from Stratford was born.
William from Stratford did exist, and he was involved in the theater as an actor and part owner of theaters, but he could barely write his name much less thirty-six plays, some of which are considered by many to be some of the finest literature in world history.(3)
Professor of English Charles LaPorte in his book The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century, states “The works of Shakespeare became a secular equivalent or replacement to the Bible...they made Shakespeare into a god in a very nut and bolts way” (1,2)
An English nobody had become the greatest in all the world for all time. It was exceptional. Born was a Myth powerful enough to convert believers into people of a new religion, a religion custom designed to spread a sense of English exceptionalism, previously found only in royalty and the royalty adjacent, the English aristocracy, the gentry. The great plays and the Myth of the miracle commoner genius operated on the human mind “as a bow to the fiddle”, (see above) and thus buried itself into the heart of a nation. Shakespeare became a symbol of Britain herself. Brittania, the ‘sceptered isle’ would surely then have as great a destiny as had the man idolized as “the Bard”. Why surely, the small nobody nation, barely literate, torn by strife, decades behind the Italians, the French and the Spanish, had become
“…This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea’ Tragedy Of King Richard II (22)
This newfound understanding contained in John Of Gaunt’s remarkable monologue, presaged a new self-confidence born and destined to change the world, as contained in the monologues itself, transforming backwards and ignorant nobody England into to a great Empire “Renowned for their deeds as far from home/For Christian service and true chivalry.” Here in John Gaunt’s monolgue (and so many others) was the exceptionalism, patriotism and the pride that was the reason for the hoax. The Myth that contained the multiple more myths of the plays transformed a nation, and ehre began the British Empire.
Obviously this was not happenstance and not by accident. Evidence shows that the Myth of Shakespeare was consciously created by a great Myth-maker: the very author of the plays himself, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Sir Francis Bacon. Who else? He certainly had help, but it was his ideas from an unparalleled and sinister genius.
In Francis Bacon, Professor Peter Zagorin’s recent and excellent biographical study of Bacon and his writing (non-Shakespeare, winky face) Professor Zagorin brilliantly details exactly how much and how often Empire was on Bacon’s mind, to be found all throughout his large body of writing. (Spedding’s “Collected Works” ran to 14 volumes) Besides Bacon’s astonishing prophecy of technocracy in New Atlantis, Bacon is most famous for a collection of essays, compiled in a book that he worked on for most of his life titled appropriate enough, Essays. Many of the pieces deal with the “temper of empire” with titles such as “Of Empire”, and “Of The True Greatness Of Kingdoms And Estates”. In a separate essay titled “Of The True Greatness Of The Kingdom of Britain” Bacon prophesied that “England united with Scotland would grow into one of the greatest monarchies the world had ever seen”. (5) Baron Verulam, was “convinced that England’s and Britain’s destiny lay in expansion.”(4).
More Than The Bard
For this destiny of Empire to be realized much more was needed; the Mythic Stratfordian and his plays were just a part of the plan. To pull off such a colossal ambition, Bacon would need two more religions: Freemasonry and Science. (24) Today Bacon is widely known as ‘the father of modern science”. I will soon provide in another paper the evidence I have found intending to make him known also as the “Father of Modern Freemasonry”. Some of that evidence is in this essay: “The Birth of a Religion: Freemasonry’s Scottish Origins: The Family Of Love, The Art Of Memory, The Knights Templar, King James, Poetry and Human Sacrifice”. What he accomplished with Freemasonry I consider superior and even more astonishing than the Shakespeare plays. However the two are intertwined. The earliest sustained symbolism of modern Freemasonry is found in the Shakespeare plays. Freemasons were there as well at the birth of modern Science as some of the very first members of Bacon’s The Royal Society Of London For Improving Natural Knowledge. (28)
Eminent historian Peter Gay in his classic two-part work The Enlightenment calls Bacon “the patron saint of the Enlightenment.” This model of history is widely accepted. Bacon was a visionary. (10,11) Freemasons explain to each new member that they will become “enlightened” by Freemasonry. Freemasons call themselves “Sons Of Light”, and they formed well before the earliest date given for the era known as the Enlightenment to have been widespread. The strong link between Freemasonry and the era known as “The Enlightenment” is not well known. Is it just a coincidence? Not likely.
What makes Bacon so extraordinary among the great builders of Empire was not that he took to the theater and to poetry to mold the minds of his countrymen, “as the bow to the fiddle of men’s minds”, such that they would be fit and ripe for territorial and cultural expansion. Julius Caesar had also been a writer. Perhaps that’s where Bacon picked up the idea. Bacon wrote that Caesar was the “the most excellent of all natural men”. (26) Caesar wrote prose. Bacon wrote poetry and prose. Caesar had the poet Virgil, and although his work wasn’t well known until just after Caesar, Virgil functioned for Ancient Rome as did the Bard, as a national poet of empire. Echoes of Virgil are in many of the Shakespeare plays. Caesar and Rome had a secret society/mystery religion called Mithraism. Bacon borrowed from that as well. Freemasonry has many sources, but it is closely modeled on Mithraism. What Caesar and Rome did not have, however was modern Science. This stupendous creation of Sir Francis would put Perfidious Albion into first place on the list as the greatest Empire in history, fulfilling much of the Baron’s outsized agenda, though the full scope of his ambition would require even more. Bacon outlined what was to be that more in his fable New Atlantis, and he also suggested it in the groundbreaking work that opened the door to modern science, Novum Organum. More on that below.
Bacon’s knowledge of the human psyche was truly exceptional, even just going by his book of Essays (1585-1625) and Novum Organum (1620) and his other book on science De Augmentis Scientiarum. (1623) I believe he used the writing of the plays as a sort science to study the human mind. He famously stated that he had taken “all of knowledge to be my province” in a letter he wrote to his uncle the powerful secretary of state Lord Burleigh, William Cecil. Bacon’s education was unparalleled. He was rumored to have read almost every book in England at a young age, making the irony of the Shakespeare origin myth deep and wide: instead of an untutored commoner genius the plays were written by perhaps the most educated man in history, who even had a claim to royalty; an exact inversion of the hoax, the Myth, the Big Lie of the man from Stratford. (20) Only a small part of the plays were for personal expression; they are much more ‘art as master strategy’ densely multi-leveled in meaning and symbolism.
The fact that the nine ‘history plays” in the corpus found in the First Folio are widely understood today by scholars as a form of purposeful Tudor propaganda cements the notion that the plays served an ulterior motive much different than mere entertainment, art, philosophy or propaganda. (6,7,8)
Nobody Would Have Worshipped Francis Bacon
Let’s stay with the impact of the Myth and the plays on the minds of men for a moment shall we? Consider this from noted British historian A.L. Rowse and his book “The England Of Elizabeth”:
“[Shakespeare] must have expressed what was native to the English instinct, released preferences deeper and more subtle than of the mind, this of unconscious and natural choice”.
Incredible…“native to the English instinct…deeper and more subtle than of the mind”! That’s exactly what I’m tawkin’ about. A. L. Rowse is no slouch. He published close to 100 books and “his brilliance was widely recognised” according to Wikipedia. The quote goes on:
“In that lies the tremendous vitality and power of his work. There is something mysterious about Shakespeare to the English, as not a few of them have felt.
The real mystery is the explanation of the inexhaustible vitality and veracity of all that he wrote, plays, characters, poetry or prose, for us English. So that centuries afterwards, in the stress of fighting for existence, in theaters disturbed by falling bombs and rockets, in quiet English fields while the planes go over Normandy, it is still his words that come to our lips.”
“…it is still his words that come to our lips” in times of danger. Got religion much? “While planes go over Normandy?” Got Empire much? The quote continues:
“The mystery the English feel may be that this man of centuries ago should express them so completely today, should have expressed them perhaps forever.”
This collective impact and power of the plays illustrated by Rowse would never have existed if it was known who really wrote them. Nobody would have worshipped Bacon, whose persona was the dry, conniving homosexual upwardly mobile lawyer-striver who destroyed his buddy the Earl Of Essex and flamboyantly kissed the ass of King James and his detested boyfriend the Duke of Buckingham, among other peccadilloes.
I have presented a cornucopia of facts on file that prove Bacon was Shakespeare. It won’t matter to very many people. Foundational meta-Myths are nearly impossible to dislodge or change with mere facts. They grow slowly and they lodge in the heart, a place much deeper than the head. People will defend meta-Myth with their life. That’s the whole idea, and illustrates the power of story, of theater, of language and above all of Myth.
The ‘Shakespeare Effect’ hovered over Britain to become the fuel of English exceptionalism that historically important figures like Lord Palmerston, Alfred Milner, Mackinder, Cecil Rhodes, HG Wells, Churchill and others ad nauseam imbibed and puked back out onto the planet, expressing their belief in the same exceptionalism that justified the need for a slave-trading, dope-running, gun-running imperialism: because Empire, because exceptional.
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