The Bosphorus - Authorship of Othello

The Bosphorus

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

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

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

Othello 3.3.451

These words could not have been used by Will Shaksper, who had died shortly after Sandy's book was published. They do not appear in the play of "Othello," published in quarto in 1622.   They first appeared in The First Folio of 1623. Is it also a coincidence that the two seas east and west of the Bosphorus are mentioned under similar names both by "Shakespeare" and Bacon? Shakespeare calling them "Pontic and Propontic," and Bacon in his treatise entitled "De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris," calling them "Pontus and Propontis?"

The Death of Desdemona - Authorship of Othello

The Death of Desdemona

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

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

Is it a coincidence that Francis Bacon in his Historia Vita et Mortis, printed a few months after Othello first appeared in the First Folio, tells us that he had been making enquirers as to how long one's physical and mental powers can act in certain directions after every sign of life has gone? And he mentions the report of a man who, when his heart had been torn out by the executioner, was heard to utter three or four words of prayer. Bacon was probably referring to the case of Babington, who, in 1586, engineered a conspiracy to murder Queen Elizabeth and who, on his heart being torn out, is reported to have muttered, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." "Shakespeare" tells us of a lady who spoke after she had for a long time been deprived of breath; Bacon tells us of a man who spoke after his heart had been torn out.

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Broadly speaking the Shakespeare Plays can be divided into two groups; those printed during Will Shakspere's lifetime, and those which first appeared in the Folio of 1623, seven years after his death in 1616. Othello falls into neither group. It was first printed in 1622, six years after William's death, and was re-printed next year in the Folio of 1623, completely revised, with 160 lines deleted, and with trifling verbal alterations throughout. The re-arrangement of the lines required no little skill and reveals the hand of the author in almost every scene.

Stratfordians maintain that all the shortcomings of the quarto text are due to stage "cuts." The word "all" is too sweeping and inhibits further enquiry. Cuts for the stage were probably made, but in this case there is clear evidence of extensive revision. Some of the new lines are the author's substitutions for lines deleted; some restore omissions which lead to an obvious non sequitor ; some are more polished elegancies of speech. Most important of all, some are really fine passages, newly interpolated, which no competent editor or producer would omit.

Martin Pares

http://www.sirbacon.org/othello.htm

Bacon’s quality as a poet

Bacon’s quality as a poet

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

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

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

Details on Bacon's and Shakespeare's writing styles

Details on Bacon's and Shakespeare's styles:

A. Antithesis: this is the contrast of ideas expressed by parallelisms of strongly contrasted words.
"But day by night and night by day oppressed" Sonnet 28
"Time was I had honour without leisure; and now I have leisure without honour". Bacon

"Or I shall short my promise by lengthening my return". Cymbeline 1.7.200-201
"I, who desire to live to study, may be driven to study to live". Bacon

N.B.Cockburn says (and I'm paraphrasing): "Antithesis was in vogue in the Elizabethan era, especially in the pre-Shakespearian period before about 1580. John Lyly used it quite often. But I know of no Elizabethan (or other) writer of poetry or prose who pursued antithesis as persistently and adroitly as did Bacon and Shake-Speare. Their addiction to it is so intense as to constitute almost a mental disorder; and sometimes they strain language to achieve it. "

B. Metaphors and Similes:
  "His mind was wonderfully quick in perceiving analogies of all sorts. But...he sometimes appears strangely deficient in the power of distinguishing rational from fanciful analogies". "Indeed, he possessed this faculty, or this faculty possessed him, to a morbid degree". Lord Macauley on Bacon.
  "There is perhaps no [prose] author so metaphorical as Bacon; his whole style is saturated with metaphor". T.B. Shaw in Outlines of English Literature (1849)

"Shakespeare perceived a thousand distant and singular relations between the objects which met his view. He had the habit of that learned subtlety which sees and animates everything, and leaves no hint of resemblances unnoticed". Francois Guizot

"The swift movement from image to image, and the complex fusion of ideas, are typical of Bacon at his best, when the need to realise certain abstract ideas forces him to make a poetical use of language." Quennell and Johnson in A History of English Literature (1972)

C.  Vocabulary
  "Bacon made a study of comparative philology to show in what points each language excels and in what it fails, so that not only may languages be enriched by mutual exchanges, but also the several beauties of each combined, and thus made to constitute a model speech of itself." Spedding 4.441
"I had often observed, and so have other men of great account, that if he [Bacon] had occasion to repeat another man's words after him, he had an use and faculty to dress them in better vestments and apparel than they had before. So that the author should find his own speech much amended and yet the substance of it still retained. As it had been natural for him to use good forms". Canon Rawley

D. Aphorisms Both authors found it hard to resist an aphorism, and coined many that have been on men's tongues ever since.

E. Habit of Revision
  Shake-Speare and Bacon were both inveterate revisers, even after publication.
  "I myself have seen at least twelve copies of the Instauration [Novum Organum] revised year by year, one after the other, and every year altered and amended in the frame thereof, till at least it came to that model in which it was committed to the press. He would suffer no moment of time to slip from him without some present improvement". Canon Rawley

F. Stumbling over Grammar
  "..the tangled, elliptical, helter-skelter sentences into which the impetuous imagination of Shakespeare sometimes hurries him." Christopher North
  "Bacon's mind, with its fullness and eagerness of thought, was at all times apt to outrun his powers of grammatical expression."Spedding 1.145

G. "Do", "doth", "dost" etc
  Both Bacon and Shake-Speare adhered, to their last days, to these expletives before verbs: "When I do count the clock that tells the time". The usage of them though had began to die out at the end of the 16th century.

F. Carelessness over Detail
  "Shake-Speare sometimes seems indifferent to detail. There are quite often loose ends in the plots of the plays, or even inconsistencies in the names of characters and so on. (even giving leeway for inaccurate transcription).
  Bacon also was sometimes indifferent to detail. He often misquoted from the classics and other sources.
  "We have abundant proof that he [Bacon] was eminently inattentive to details". editor S.H.Reynolds of the Clarendon Press

  "...the Law does not care about trivialities; I cannot thread needles so well". Bacon

How could Bacon have time to write the Shakespeare plays?

How could Bacon have the time to write the Shakespeare works??

This is a summary of the chapter on Bacon's spare time by N.B. Cockburn's The Bacon Shakespeare Question (1998).

The period of Shake-Speare's output was from about 1589 to about 1613.

Bacon returned from France in 1579 and took up residence in Chambers in Gray's Inn to start legal studies. In 1586 he became a Bencher and then a Reader, which was a one term appointment for him to lecture for two weeks, later reduced to one week. His first reading was in 1588. His second was in 1600. Around 1590 he became a Queen's Counsel Extraordinary with duties that weren't clearly defined. Sometimes he would exam prisoners and draw up official reports. He seems not to have received any Court  brief until Jan 1594, nearly 12 years after his call to the Bar.

     In 1607 he became Solicitor-General though this office "was not a very onerous one in those days." John Lord Campbell, a Victorian Lord Chancellor, in his book The Lives of the Lord Chancellors (1845) wrote that Bacon "never appears to have had much practice at the Bar", and had "abundant leisure" in his earlier years. Law vacations were for no less than 35 weeks each year.

      But he did play a full part in the administrative life of Gray's Inn. He was also a Member of Parliament from 1581 until he became Lord Keeper in 1617. But Parliament was seldom in session. It was summoned only 5 times from 1584-1597. From 1607-1613 Parliament seems to have sat for a total of only about 6 months. Nor was Bacon called upon to advise his King James until after the death of Robert Cecil in 1612.

    So, Bacon was never very busy publicly or professionally until Oct 1613 when he was appointed Attorney-General. When he became Lord Keeper in 1617 he was then overburdened.

     During the period of the Shakespeare works Bacon's prose writing was limited  with only two substantial works--The Advancement of Learning and the second  edition of his essays. Most of his works were composed in the last 5 years of his life. Shakespeare's works span about 24 years, the plays averaging less than two a year. By contrast Thomas Heywood had written or been involved in 220 plays. Bacon was known as a fast writer. His History of King Henry VII (248 pages) seems to have been completed in about 4 months, for which he spent most of the time during historical research.

    The better question is--how did Bacon spend his generous leisure time? He was an avid reader obviously, having taken "all knowledge" as his province.  The study of law was so boring that many students would abandon it for the delights of poetry. Law was not a favorite study of Bacon and he is not thought  to have ever acquired great legal learning of case precedents. However, he was said to have been unexcelled in the science and principles of Law.

   In 1607 when Bacon became busier as Solicitor-General the output of Shakespeare plays dropped to about one per year. When he became Attorney-General  in 1613, this is about when the plays ended.

     Cockburn's analysis suggests that as an actor Will Shaksper probably had less time for play writing, especially in his earlier years. The actor's life was hectic and time-consuming, with each play's run very short, thus requiring them to be often in rehearsal. Plus, Shakespeare's company is known to have at least toured in the provinces in 1597, 1600, 1603, 1604, 1605, 1606, 1608, 1609, 1610, and 1612.

Elegies for Francis Bacon

Here are a couple of elegies (out of over 30) written after Francis Bacon's death in 1626.

At Threnody on the Death of the Most Illustrious and Renowned Personage, Sir Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam.    [Note: A threnody is a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person].

    "Muses pour forth your perennial waters in lamentations, and let Apollo shed tears (plentiful as the water) which even the Castalian stream contains; for neither would meagre dirges befit so great a loss, nor our moderate drops the mighty monument. The very nerve of genius, the marrow of persuasion, the golden stream of eloquence, the precious gem of concealed literature, the noble Bacon (ah! the relentless warp of the three sisters) has fallen by the fates. O how am I in verse like mine to commemorate you, sublime Bacon! and those glorious memorials of all the ages composed by your genius and by Minerva. With what learned, beautiful, profound matters the Great Instauration is full! With what light does it scatter the darksome moths of the ancient sages! creating from chaos a new wisdom: thus God Himself will with potent hand restore the body laid in the tomb; therefore you do not die (O Bacon !) for the Great Instauration will liberate you from death and darkness and the grave."
    R. C., T. C.

Note: Apollo--As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo

The Castalian Spring was where Roman poets came to receive poetic inspiration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castalian_Spring

Notice also the reference to Minerva (Pallas Athena- the "Spear Shaker")

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. . On the Death of the Right Honourable Lord Francis Bacon of Verulam,
     Viscount St. Albans, Late Chancellor of England.

" .... The pole of the literary globe is dislocated, where with equal earnestness he adorned the garb of a citizen and the robe of state. As Eurydice (wife of Orpheus) wandering through the shades of Dis (Greek God Pluto) longed to caress Orpheus, so did Philosophy entangled in the subtleties of Schoolmen seek Bacon as a deliverer, with such winged hand as Orpheus (Chief among poets) lightly touched the lyre's strings, the Styx before scarce ruffled now at last bounding, with like hand stroked Philosophy raised high her crest; nor did he with workmanship of fussy meddlers patch, but he renovated her (Philosophy) walking lowly in the shoes of Comedy. After that more elaborately he rises on the loftier tragic buskin, and the Stagirite (like) Virbius comes to life again in Novum Organurn"?

[note: The sock and buskin are two ancient symbols of comedy and tragedy. In Greek theatre, actors in tragic roles wore a boot called a buskin that elevated them above the other actors. The actors with comedic roles only wore a thin soled shoe called a sock.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock_and_Buskin

Orpheus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

Love's Labor's Lost - Authorship Evidence - Part 1

Love's Labor's Lost - Authorship Evidence - Part 1

There's a great deal of evidence on the authorship question regarding this play. And it's important enough to post most of the main points. So it will cover four separate posts to make it more digestible. Remember I'm leaving out much of the evidence and analysis for sake of space.

This is taken from Cockburn's Chapter 9 pgs 129-146

The play's plot has the King of Navarre (then an autonomous province in the South-West corner of France) and three of his young Lords vowing to devote three years to study, excluding woman and merriment. They set up an academy for this purpose. But a princess (daughter of the King of France) arrives with her three Ladies-in-waiting, whom the men find distracting.

The incidents of this plot match very well actual events in France in 1578. Then, Henri Bourbon was King of Navarre and another Henry, Henry III was King of France. Francis Bacon was in France from September 1576-March 1579, being attached to the British Ambassador there.

The play was first known to have been published in 1598, but this appears to be a revised version. It's also not known where it was first played. For many reasons, it's argued here that it was meant to part of the Gray's Inn Christmas Revels of 1594-95 along with The Comedy of Errors. The firm evidence we have is that it was played before two private audiences--once before Queen Elizabeth, and another time at either Southampton House or at the home of Robert Cecil before Queen Anne in 1605.

Following are the points relevant to the authorship question:

Point 1) Like with The Comedy of Errors, it wouldn't have been economical for a playwright to write a play meant for a private audience, either at Gray's Inn, or elsewhere. The 1631 Folio of Shake-Speare's Works says it was performed at the Globe and at the Blackfriars Theatres, but we don't have evidence that it actually was and this may have been added as another sales ploy long after the event.

Point 2) The clever bantering and in-jokes in the play favor an insider authorship and a peculiar audience, rather than the usual public theater attendees.

Example (a) the reference to the School of Night [act 4,scene 3] refers to the disagreements between the circle of friends of Walter Raleigh that favored a life of contemplation and study as opposed to having love interests, and Raleigh's enemy the Earl of Essex and his circle (including Bacon) that didn't exclude the study of love, along with their academic interests. The slight at Raleigh's school favors Bacon's authorship, as Essex was his close friend and someone he advised. The argument for Will Shakepere is that he had the Earl of Southampton as his patron and as Southampton was also friends with Essex that W. Shakspere too might have made the same slight at Raleigh. But there isn't clear evidence of Southampton's patronage of Will Shakspere. Nor is there any evidence of a friendship between him and Essex.

Example (b) The character in the play named Don Armado acts and speaks like a historical person that was a friend to Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony. Don Armado resembles Antonio Perez who was a Spanish Secretary of State who defected and came to England in April 1593 and joined somewhat to the Essex circle. Both Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony mention him in their letters, as does King Henry IV of France and Navarre in a letter to Anthony. In the play, Don Armado was a Spanish braggart who used flowery, affected language. Antonio Perez had a similar personality to this and used similar language, which annoyed the Bacon brothers so much they were glad to be rid of him later. More specifically, in the play, Holofernes says of Don Armado: "He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it". "Peregrinate" meaning "Having the air of one who has lived or travelled abroad". Antonio Perez had nicknamed himself "Peregrino" and signed letters and his book with this name. We also know that Francis Bacon well knew this word as he used a variation of it, writing "a full period [end] of all instability and peregrination". In addition, one of Anthony Bacon's contacts wrote of Perez that "Surely he is, as we say, an odd man".

Francis Bacon was far more likely to know of these peculiarities of Perez than would be Will Shakspere, and far more likely to have a motive to write them in a play since he close friends could appreciate the inside joke. The Stratfordian argument is that Don Armado (as well as other characters) is a stock character of the Italian Commedia del Arte and not unusual. Italian players had visited England, but this was in the 1570's and so would have been much too early for Will Shakspere to be very familiar with them, whereas Bacon had ample opportunity to learn about them while at the French court in the 1570s. Plus, Martin Hume, in his Spanish Influence in English Literature (1905) observed that "No one can read Perez's many published letters and Relacianoes [a book] without identifying numerous affected turns of speech with those put into the mouth of Don Adriano Armado".

So, the forgoing evidence again favors Bacon's authorship of Love's Labor's Lost over that of William Shakspere's. [end of Part 1 of 4]