25+ reasons why Bacon is Hamlet

1. Bacon = “ham”-let!!

2. FB was a concealed Tudor Prince. Hamlet is a prince. Neither Oxford (nor Stratford Willy) were princes. (For current purposes, I state this without proof, which can be a topic for separate discussion. For sake of current argument, and for the purposes of laying bare the identities in Hamlet, Bacon’s hidden parentage by Elizabeth and Earl of Leicester is assumed.)

3. Burleigh is Polonius: Bacon grew up in Burleigh’s mansion on the Strand.

4. Bacon’s concealed mother was Queen Elizabeth, who is the Queen, Hamlet’s mother

5. Bacons father, the Earl of Leicester, who was the Queen’s consort in all but name, and thus the “King”, was destroyed in public opinion, or “killed”, by malicious gossip spread by Burleigh about the death of Leicesters first wife, Amy Robsart. This is allegorised in the play by the King killed by poison being poured in his ear.

6. Burleigh then became the Queen’s closest adviser and confidante, thus becoming, in effect, the new “King”: In the play, with poetic license, Burleigh has been split into two characters to conceal and reveal this: he is both Polonius and the new King.

7. One of the sources of the play is the work of Severinus Dane, (the “Melancholy Dane”). Here a host of parallels between Bacon’s work and the play emerge, as described in Edwin Bormans book The Shakespeare Secret (1896). These parallels constitute unique fingerprints of thought, which specifically and uniquelyt identify Bacon as the author, over and above the circumstantial evidence cited above.

“Theophrastus Paracelsus, the great Swiss thinker (he lived from 1493 to 1541), set up the theory; Bernardinus Telesius Consentinus, the Italian natural philosopher (1508-1588), enlarged upon it and Petrus Severinus Danus, the Danish physician (died in 1602), reduced it to a distinct system. Bacon understood no German, or, at most, very little thereof. He can scarcely have studied the intellectually rich and almost countless writings and pamphlets of Paracelsus as they were written in a style of German that was still clumsy and indistinct. But Bacon knew his theory from the principal work of Bernardinus Telesius of Cosenza, De Rerum Natura (Concerning the Nature of Things), of which the first two books appeared in 1565 and th whole was completed in 1586; he furthermore, knew this theory thanks to the work of the Dane Petrus Severinus : Idea Medicinae Philosohicae (The Idea of a Philosophical Medical System), which work was written in clear and lucid Latin and served him (Bacon) as instructor in the science of healing, the work being based on natural science. When Bacon, in quite early youth, began to sketch out the plan of his Great Instauration—and we find traces of this aim as far back even as before his fourteenth year—the works of Telesius and Severinus were the newest in the field of natural philosophy. Even Bacon himself, who very rarely mentions the names of other investigators, mentions the works above at short intervals in the 4th chapter of the 3rd Book of his Encyclopedy (The Theory of Theophrastus Paracelsus, eloquently reduced into a body and harmony by Serverinus the Dane; or that of Telesius of Consentium) and he mentions two of them again (Bernardinus Telesius and Paracelsus) in the 3rd Chapter of the 4th Book, wherein he discusses the question of the human soul in detail.”

From http://www.sirbacon.org/bhamlet.htm: The Shakespeare Secret by Edwin Borman, 1896

8. Bacons doctrine of spirits, or ghosts, as set forth in his History of Life and Death, is illustrated in exact detail in the play, in the character of the Ghost, or Spirit of Hamlet’s father.

9. Characters in the play embody philosophical positions summarised by Severinus Dane and adopted by Bacon. Thus Marcellus puts forward the views of Paracelsus, Barnado represents Bernadino Telesius and Horatio is Ratio or reason. (“There are more things in heaven and earth, O Reason, than thy philosophy can imagine.”)

10. The opening character is Francisco. He does nothing except finish his watch and exit, with a comment about his sick stomach and the cold. Bacon had weak constitution and was warned by his mother in a letter to take care with his delicate stomach.

11. Bacon is connected to Elsinore Castle through the composer John Dowland, whose Second Book of Ayres was published in Elsinore, and who elsewhere works with bacon/shakespeare on songs from some of the plays. Five of Dowlands works are printed under Bacons personal printing marks. (Incidentally, this is another example where John Michell makes an incorrect statement, claiming Bacon had no links to Denmark). Matthew Lownes was the publisher for four of the works Bacon had printed under his own name. It is significant then that a number Dowland’s works were published either by Matthew Lownes, or his brother Humphrey Lownes. Bacons printing device of Pallas Athena appears on Dowland’s most important work , Lachrimae. There is a sonnet in The Passionate Pilgrim, which seems to imply that Dowland and Spenser were the same person. If Bacon was Spenser, as persuasively argued for example in George Harmann’s Edmund Spenser and the Impersonations of Francis Bacon, then that person was FB. So, musician John Dowland, who happened to be employed for Christian IV of Denmark as a court lutenist at the castle of Elsinore at the time Hamlet was written in 1600, was published at the very least, if not an actual mask, of Francis Bacon.

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

12. The gravediggers scene discusses the putrefaction of bodies. Bacon discusses this topic in experiment 771 of Century viii of his Natural History. There are numerous parallels between the conversation between the grave-diggers and Bacons idea. For example, bacon attributes putrefaction to moisture and says it can be delayed if a method can be found to keep liquid out. This is mirrored in the play in the reference to the body of the tanner not decomposing because his tanned skin naturally kept out the water

13. In the same scene, Alexander and Caesar come up in the very same discussion. Bacon also brings up these two names in the same passage in experiment 771: “But I find in Plutarch and others that when Augustus Caesar visited the Sepulchre of Alexander the Greatin Alexandria he found the body to keep his dimension; but withal that notwithstanding all the embalming (which no doubt was of the best), the body was so tender, as Caesar touching but the nose of it defaced it.”

14. The kings body natural and body politic: In Hamlet IV ii, is the line: “The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body.” This cryptic utterance has caused endless puzzlement and debate amongst commentators. Again, by reference to Bacon’s works it can be understood. In 1608, FB gave a speech in a lawcase called “The case of the Post-Nati in Scotland”, quotde in Spedding. Here is a snippet: “the natural body of the King hath an operation and influence into his body politic, as well as his body politic hath upon his body natural; and therefore that although his body politic of King of England, and his body politic of King of Scotland, be several and distinct, yet nevertheless his natural person which is one, hath an operation upon both and createth a privy between them”. Similar references turn up in a 1603 Bacon speech.  Thus Bacon shows he had on his mind at the time of the second quarto of Hamlet issued in 1604, this fine distinction in law between the king’s “body natural” and his “body politic”. This is an abstruse, esoteric sliver of detail from constitutional law, hardly the kind of thing on either Stratford Willy or Oxford’s mind, but shown here as yet another thread in the vast tapestry of Bacon’s thinking.

15. Another source on which the play is based on Historiae Danicae by Saxo Grammaticus. Bacon mentions this book in the 1631 French edition of his Natural History: “In fact, I have only remarked on a single example of such a marvel, and that is in The History of Denmark, a book written by Saxo Grammaticus, who relates a veritable history that during the reign of King Ericius there arrived at the Court of Denmark a musician very skilled in his profession, who boasted that he could produce the feelings of joy or sadness, of peace or rage, in the breasts of man, by the mere sound of music”.

16. In Bacon’s private notebook Promus (~1595-6), occurs the French phrase: “Qui prete a l’ami perd au double”, which translates “Loan to a friend, loseth double”. There is a clear parallel in Hamlet, from Polonius famous advice speech: “Neither a borrower or a lender be, For loan oft loseth both itself and friend.” (Incidentally, this example shows it is not sufficient to claim that Bacon heard Oxford spouting parts of Hamlet in private conversation, otherwise, it would have be noted in English, not French.)

17. Essex’s letter to the Earl of Rutland in 1596, written by Bacon according to Spedding, contains clear parallels to Polonius advice to his son. Many of the phrases from this passage which have puzzled commentators, turn up in various places in Bacons works, in such manner as to provide the elucidation which has eluded orthodox, not to mention oxfordian scholars. There are a number of examples, including the line (I iii 78-80):

this above all; to thine own self be true,

And it must follow as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

This line has caused commentators endless vexation, but it is a frequent expression of Bacons, occurs in the Rutland letter, and provides the necessary clues to understanding the authors intention. This is the real value of knowing that Bacon wrote shakespeare. From an extended recent passage discussing this line I quote the following:

“ It should be noted that the conjunction of “true to self” and “not false to others” occurs in Bacon and Shakespeare has only been found in Shake-speare and Bacon (though I suspect that it could be unearthed elsewhere). The Arden editor and Flak, and the Variorum editor (and so probably Stratfordians generally) seem unaware of its presence in the Bacon Essay, of the other Bacon passages using “true to self”. One need have little doubt that by “true to self, so not false to others”, Shake-speare meant the same as Bacon. There is a pointer to this in Alls Well that Ends Well (Act 1. Sc i) where, in a somewhat similar passage of advice to a young man, one precept is “do wrong to none”.

The confusion over the meaning of the line (Hamlet I iii 78 – 80) has arisen because Shake-speare in using “false” (which has been misunderstood by some to mean “fickle”) sacrificed clarity to antithesis, as did Bacon in his almost identical wording – both authors were addicted to antithesis. The confusion would have been dispelled long ago if Stratfordians would both to read Bacon”

18. Back-up plan: Hamlet IV vii has: There fore this project Should have a back or second that might hold If this did blast in proof.” Baconin The Advancement of Learning says: “A man ought to have one thing under another, as if he cannot have that he seeketh in the best degree, yet to have it in the second”.

19. In Hamlet III iv occurs: “forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep”. In Bacon’s Natural History we find: “Joy causeth cheerfulness and vigour in the eyes, singling leaping, dancing, and sometimes tears. All these effects of dilation and coming forth of the spirits into the outward parts; which maketh them more lively and stirring.” Also in his History of Life and Death: “The vital spirit has a special abhorrence of leaving the body…it may perhaps rush to the extremities of the body to meet something that it loves. And in his De Augmentis: “For every passion of the more vehement kind produces motions in the eyes and indeed in the whole countenance and gesture, which are uncomely, unsettled, skipping and deformed.” Compare Troilus and Cressida: “Fie Fie upon her! Theres language in her eye, her cheek her lip – Nay, her foot speaks, her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body.”

20. Hamlet: “What a piece of work is man….how infinite in faculties….the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. Compare these various quotes from Bacon: “infinite variety of  behaviour and manners of men”…..”Man in his mansion, sleep, exercise, passions, hath infinite variations; and it cannot be denied but that the body of man of all other things is the most compounded mass.”….Falstaff says “this foolish-compounded clay, man”….back to Bacon: “in the mass and composition of which man wsa made, particles taken from the different animals were infused and mixed up with clay, for it is most true that of all things in the universe man is the most composite.”

21.  Hamlet I iv: “it is a nipping and an eager air” . Bacon: Whereby the cold becometh more eager” Natural History 688. The OED cites Hamlet as the first recorded instance of the word “eager” applied to cold, and no further instance until 1854; however, we see that Bacon uses the word in that sense also. Perhaps he coined it from the French word “aigre”, which means eager or sharp.

22. Hamlet II ii: “This brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.” Bacon: “(If God had been of human disposition) he would have cast the stars to some pleasant and beautiful works and orders, like the frets in the roofs of houses”

23. Hamlet: III I: “There;’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood, And I do doubt the hatch and disclose Will be in some danger.” Bacon: “The distance between…the egg laid and the disclosing or hatching”. Natural History 759. Has anyone ever used this tautology of “hatch and disclose”? His are bacon and shakespeare both employing it.

24. Hamlet: III ii  in the famous advice to players : “Do not saw the air too much with your hand…etc”

Bacon, from Short Notes for Civil Conversation: It is necessary to use a steadfast countenance, not wavering with action, as in moving the head or hand too much, which showeth a fantastical light and fickle operation of the spirit, and consequently like mind as gesture; only it is sufficient with leisure to use a modest action in either.

25. Hamlet: III ii: “forest of feathers”

Bacon, describing the forests around his house, quoted in Aubrey: “I will not be stripped of my feathers”

An odd metaphor, a forest of feathers, cropping up in both Shakespeare and Bacon.

26. Bacon held that stars are true fires, plus other astronomical allusions in Hamlet and elsewhere which point to Bacons thought: http://www.sirbacon.org/links/reed.htm