Bacon is Shake-Speare | Page 3

of portion of Folio 85 of the original MS. of Bacon's "Promus."
XLIII. Portrait of Francis Bacon, from painting by Van Somer, formerly in the collection of the Duke of Fife.
The Ornamental Headings of the various Chapters are mostly variations of the "Double A" ornament found in certain Shakespeare Quarto Plays, and in various other books published circa 1590-1650.
A few references will be found below:--
Title Page, and To the Reader. Shakespeare's Works. 1623.
Contents. Page ix. North's "Lives." 1595. Spenser's "Faerie Queene." 1609, 1611. Works of King James. 1616. Purchas' "Pilgrimages." 1617. Bacon's "Novum Organum." 1620. Seneca's Works. 1620. Speed's "Great Britaine." 1623. Bacon's "Operum Moralium." 1638.
Page 1. Heading of CHAPTER I. "Contention of Yorke and Lancaster,"
Part I. 1594.
"Romeo and Juliet." 1599. "Henry V." 1598, 1600. "Sir John Falstaffe." 1602. "Richard III." 1602. "Regimen Sanitatis Salerni." 1597.
Page 6. Heading of CHAPTER II. Hardy's "Le Theatre," vol. 4. 1626. Barclay's "Argenis." 2 vols. 1625-26. Aleman's "Le Gueux." 1632.
Page 35. Heading of CHAPTER III. Mayer's "Praxis Theologica." 1629. Ben Jonson's Works, Vol. 2. 1640.
Page 40. Heading of CHAPTER IV. "The Shepheard's Calendar." 1617. "The Rogue." 1622. Barclay's "Argenis." 1636. Bacon's "Remaines." 1648. "The Mirrour of State." 1656.
Page 47. Heading to CHAPTER V. Preston's "Breast-plate of Faith." 1630.
Page 51. Heading to CHAPTER VI. "Venus and Adonis." 1593. "Unnatural conspiracie of Scottish Papists." 1593. "Nosce te ipsum." 1602. The ornament reversed is found in: Spenser's "Faerie Queene." 1596. "Historie of Tamerlane." 1597. Barckley's "Felicitie of Man." 1598.
Page 55. Heading to CHAPTER VII. James I. "Essayes of a Prentise in the Art of Poesie." 1584, 1585. De Loque's "Single Combat." 1591. "Taming of a Shrew." 1594 Hartwell's "Warres." 1595. Heywood's Works. 1598. Hayward's "Of the Union." 1604.
Page 55 (continued). Cervantes' "Don Quixote." 1612. Peacham's "Compleat Gentleman." 1622.
Page 69. Heading of CHAPTER VIII. "Richard II." 1597. "Richard III." 1597. "Henrie IV." 1600. "Hamlet." 1603. Shakespeare's "Sonnets." 1609. Matheieu's "Henry IV." [of France.] 1612.
Page 74. Heading of CHAPTER IX. Hardy's "Le Theatre." 1624.
Page 84. Heading of CHAPTER X. Boys' "Exposition of the last Psalme." 1615.
Page 103. Heading of CHAPTER XI. Bacon's "Henry VII." 1629. Bacon's "New Atlantis." 1631.
Page 113. Printed upside down. Camden's "Remains." 1616.
Page 134. Heading of CHAPTER XII. Preston's "Life Eternall." 1634.
Page 144. Heading of CHAPTER XIII. Barclay's "Argenis." 1636.
Page 161. Heading of CHAPTER XIV. Martyn's "Lives of the Kings." 1615. Seneca's Works. 1620. Slatyer's "Great Britaine." 1621. Bacon's "Resuscitatio,"
Part II. 1671.
Page 177. Heading of CHAPTER XV. Gustavi Seleni "Cryptomenytices." 1624.
Page 187. Introduction to "Promus." "King John." 1591. Florio's "Second Frutes." 1591. De Loque's "Single Combat." 1591 Montaigne's "Essais." 1602. Cervantes' "Don Quixote," translated by Shelton. 1612-20.
Page 287. Tail Piece from Spenser's "Faerie Queen." 1617.
[Illustration: Plate II Portrait of Francis Bacon, By Van Somer. Engraved by W.C. Edwards]

BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I.
"What does it matter whether the immortal works were written by Shakespeare (of Stratford) or by another man who bore (or assumed) the same name?"
Some twenty years ago, when this question was first propounded, it was deemed an excellent joke, and I find that there still are a great number of persons who seem unable to perceive that the question is one of considerable importance.
When the Shakespeare revival came, some eighty or ninety years ago, people said "pretty well for Shakespeare" and the "learned" men of that period were rather ashamed that Shakespeare should be deemed to be "the" English poet.
"Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy and England did adorn, . . . . . . . . . . The force of Nature could no further go, To make a third she joined the other two."
Dryden did not write these lines in reference to Shakespeare but to Milton. Where will you find the person who to-day thinks Milton comes within any measurable distance of the greatest genius among the sons of earth who was called by the name of Shakespeare?
Ninety-two years ago, viz.: in June 1818, an article appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, under the heading "Time's Magic Lantern. No. V. Dialogue between Lord Bacon and Shakspeare" [Shakespeare being spelled Shakspeare]. The dialogue speaks of "Lord" Bacon and refers to him as being engaged in transcribing the "Novum Organum" when Shakspeare enters with a letter from Her Majesty (meaning Queen Elizabeth) asking him, Shakspeare, to see "her own" sonnets now in the keeping of her Lord Chancellor.
Of course this is all topsy turvydom, for in Queen Elizabeth's reign Bacon was never "Lord" Bacon or Lord Chancellor.
But to continue, Shakspeare tells Bacon "Near to Castalia there bubbles also a fountain of petrifying water, wherein the muses are wont to dip whatever posies have met the approval of Apollo; so that the slender foliage which originally sprung forth in the cherishing brain of a true poet becomes hardened in all its leaves and glitters as if it were carved out of rubies and emeralds. The