Three Bacon Signatures at the Beginning, Middle and End of The Rape of Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece was published in 1594. No author's name appears on the title-page, but the dedication is signed "William Shakespeare".

In this poem, the hidden signature has been inserted in three distinctly different ways. Each example is clear-cut, and serves as a precedent for many later uses of each of the three methods in "Shakespeare" works to follow. 

Here then are the three signatures, shown embedded in the text of Lucrece as initials at the beginning, as an acrostic in the middle, and by the "straight-line" method at the end.

Firstly, the poem's opening lines begin with the initials " Fr B". If this is intentional, standing for Francis Bacon, then so too must be the following three lines, whose initials spell out "LAW", Francis' profession.

Then, at stanza 15, there is an excellent example of an acrostic whose presence is signalled by the text of the poem itself, as occurs also on the first pages of the Tempest (see acrostics page). In this case, the initial letters of the lines spell out B C N, followed by W Sh. It takes little imagination to suppose that these might stand for Bacon, and William Shakespeare, but any doubt as to intentionality is dispelled by the lines themselves. If we are to deny that such messages in the margin could be meaningful, how then are we any differerent from she who "could pick no meaning from their parling lookes, Nor read the subtle shining secrecies Writ in the glassie margents of such bookes":.

Finally, as if to seal both the end and the beginning of the poem with the author's real name, "bacon" may be found hidden in plain sight in the last two words of the last two lines: as follows:

            The Romans plausibly did give consent
            To Tarquim’s everlasting banishment.

FINIS

Again, any doubts as to whether this can possibly be accidental must be measured against a confirming feature conveniently provided: a straight line touching the ba and con syllables touches the initial F of Finis, spelling out F Bacon. This marks the first appearance of this method of embedding a hidden name, later used extensively on the covers of many of the Quarto editions of the plays (shown here).

To summarise the situation with The Rape of Lucrece: the opening of the poem is marked with Francis Bacons initials; in a stanza in the middle appear as an acrostic both the consonants of his surname, and the initials of "Shakespeare", in a context which all but begs the reader to read a message in the margin; finally, the poem ends with two words on the last two lines which elegantly provide the name Bacon in two neat parts, and finally, a flourish at the finish even provides an initial F to flesh our the full name F Bacon.

[Postscript: The instance of the initials at the beginning of Lucrece is discussed in John Michell's 1993 book Who Wrote Shakespeare?. He dismisses as "surely unreasonable" any idea that the initials could have been deliberately inserted by the author. However, he overlooks and ignores both the "glassy margents" stanza, and the "Bacon" name in the final lines. Placed alongside those opening initials, the acrostic and the name at the end put the situation in an entirely different light. If Bacon was not the author of the poem, then it is a curious business indeed that his name should appear at the beginning and end so prominently. It is the cumulative effect of the three signatures which reinforces and confirms their presence. One of these three examples on its own may perhaps be considered "surely unreasonable"; two examples however should begin to focus the attention, and three arranged as these are at beginning, middle and end of the poem should dispel any doubt in a non-comatose person. This lapse is not entirely atypical, incidentally, of Michell's treatment of the Baconian case in his book. For example, he states that Bacon could not have written the plays because he never visitted Italy. But this is not correct at all: there are contemporary documents which establish that Bacon made not just one but at least two trips to Italy! Not only is Michell off the mark on this not-so-minor point, but his slip demonstrates that he could not have read or consulted such basic Baconian books as William Smedley's The Mystery of Francis Bacon, or even Francis Dodd's Personal Life Story of Francis Bacon in researching his book, where he would have found the evidence presented and the case for Bacon's Italian journeys to be established beyond doubt. It has to be said that these kind of errors about the Bacon case are all too frequent amongst both orthodox and Oxfordian researchers.]