From Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients: VIII Endymion:

"This fable seems to describe the tempers and dispositions of princes, who, being thoughtful and suspicious, do not easily admit to their privacies such men as are prying, curious, and vigilant, or as it were sleepless, but rather such as are of an easy obliging nature and indulge them in their pleasures, without seeking anything farther, but seeming ignorant, insensible or as it were, lulled asleep before them."

From Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

"Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o'nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous."

In Archbishop Tenison's Baconiana or Certain Genuine Remains of Sr. Francis Bacon (1679), on p. 79, we read: "And those who have true skill in the Works of the Lord Verulam, like great Masters in Painting, can tell by the Design, the Strength, the way of Colouring, whether he was the Author of this or the other Piece, though his Name be not to it."

This is proof that Bacon wrote under other names, or masks, and is of the utmost significance. When Professor Nelson, for example, offers his opinion that it is "inherently ridiculous" to imagine Bacon could have written under a mask, it's clear that he must be unaware of the plain testimony of Archbishop Tenison's remark. Time and again, one finds, as here, that the orthodox and the oxfordian alike have simply failed to perform due diligence on the Baconian position. Even orthodox Bacon scholars, who shrink from the suggestion that he was Shakespeare, have nowhere to file the Archbishop's quote. That there is a great mystery assocated with the life and work of Francis Bacon, as Ben Johnson proclaimed in his tribute poem on Bacon's 60th birthday, is proven by Archbishop Tenison's remark and the question left hanging which it implies: what exactly are the works which Bacon wrote "though his Name be not on it"?

A clue might be given by this short quote included in the tribute to Bacon, the Manes Verulamiuni, published in Latin on his death (and ignored by scholars): "You have filled the world with your writings".

It is noteworthy that Bacon had a quaint conceit of the Divine Being which he was never tired of repeating. In the preface to the "Advancement of Learning" (1640), the following passage occurs:--"For of the knowledge which contemplates the works of Nature, the holy Philosopher hath said expressly; that the glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the King is to find it out: as if the Divine Nature, according to the innocent and sweet play of children, which hide themselves to the end they may be found; took delight to hide his works, to the end they might be found out; and of his indulgence and goodness to mankind, had chosen the Soule of man to be his Play-fellow in this game." Again on page 45 of the work itself he says:--"For so he (King Solomon) saith expressly, The Glory of God is to conceale a thing, but the Glory of a King is to find it out. As if according to that innocent and affectionate play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide his works, to the end to have them found out, and as if Kings could not obtain a greater Honour, then to be God's play-fellowes in that game, especially considering the great command they have of wits and means, whereby the investigation of all things may be perfected." Another phase of the same idea is to be found on page 136. In the author's preface to the "Novum Organum" the following passage occurs:--"Whereas of the sciences which regard nature the Holy Philosopher declares that 'it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but it is the glory of the King to find it out.' Even as though the Divine Nature took pleasure in the innocent and kindly sport of children playing at hide and seek, and vouchedsafe of his kindness and goodness to admit the human spirit for his play fellow in that game." In almost identical words Bacon suggests the same conception in "In Valerius Terminus" and in "Filum Labyrinthi". In the Epistle Dedicatorie of "The French Academie" and elsewhere the author is insisting on the same idea that "He (God) cannot be seene of any mortal creature but is notwithstanding known by his works."

from The Mystery of Francis Bacon By William T. Smedley
Chapter XIV
THE CLUE TO THE MYSTERY OFBACON'S LIFE

Last week's issue of The Spectator magazine tacitly confirmed that Bacon is Shakespeare. Judith Flander's review of Rodney Bolt's new book "History Play: The Lives and Afterlives of Kit Marlowe" opened with the following paragraph, from Nabakov's 1947 novel Bend Sinister:

"‘His name is protean. He begets doubles at every corner … On the wet morning of 27 November 1582, he is Shaxpere and [his prospective wife] is a Wately of Temple Grafton. A couple of days later he is Shagsper and she is a Hathaway of Stratford-on-Avon. Who is he? William X, cunningly composed of two left arms and a mask. Who else? The person who said (not for the first time) that the glory of God is to hide a thing, and the glory of man is to find it.’ Thus Nabokov on the mystery of Shakespeare. "

The person who originally said that the "glory of God is to hide a thing, etc" was, of course, Solomon, in Proverbs 25:2, but it was Francis Bacon who made the quotation his own. It appears so frequently in his works, for example here, that one might almost say it was his favourite quotation. Beyond question then, Nabakov was identifying that it was Bacon, in his opinion, who had written the works of Shakespeare. Thus, via Bolt via Flanders the Spectator has confirmed what we know and the world will one day embrace: Bacon is Shakespeare.

OFFICER: You here shall swear upon this sword of justice,
That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have
Been both at Delphos, and from thence have brought
The seal'd-up oracle, by the hand deliver'd
Of great Apollo's priest; and that, since then,
You have not dared to break the holy seal
Nor read the secrets in't.
CLEOMENES/DION: All this we swear.
LEONTES: Break up the seals and read.

- from The Winters Tale, page 287 of the Comedies in the First Folio

"The spirit in Hamlet bears two names: Ghost and Spirit. Ghost is the personal name, whereas it is almost invariable referred to by the speakers as Spirit, and its statement begins with: I am thy Father's Spirit.

The word Spirit (in Latin Spiritus) also plays a great part in Bacon's scientific writings. The Spirit-theory, as will soon be briefly shown, is one of the principal points in Bacon's natural-philosophy. This spirit-doctrine is based on the views held by the natural-philosophers, Paracelsus, Telesius and Severinus Danus.

Theophrastus Paracelsus, the great Swiss thinker (he lived from 1493 to 1541) set up the theory; Bernadinus 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 Bernadinus Telesius of Cosenza, De Rerum Natura (Concerning the Nature of Things), of which the first two books appeared in 1565 and the whole was completed in 1586; he, furthermore, knew this theory thanks to the work of the Dane Petrus Severinus: Idea Medicinae Philosophicae (The Idea of a Philosophical Medical System), which work was written in clear and lucid Latin and serbed 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-named 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 Severinus the Dane; or that of Telesius of Consentium"), and he mentions two of them again (Bernadinus Telesius and Paracelsus) in the 3rd Chapter of the 4th ook, wherein he discusses the question of the human soul in detail.

But, as we shall soon see, the Spirit in Hamlet is not a being created at will by poetical imagination but clearly that personification of the natural-philosophical ideas of the spirit according to Bacon's views. And thus the views of Paracelsus accord with thos of Marcellus, while those of Bernadinus Telesius harmonise with those of Barnardo in the first act of Hamlet. And Hamlet himself represents the ideas of the third in the trio, namely, of the physician Severinus Danus (in English: the melancholy Dane). The time is out of joynt and Hamlet is born to set it right! He, like Severinus Danus, deals with comparative anatomy. Like Severinus Danus he is enamoured of that healing-art which is based on examination into natural laws."

- from The Shakespeare Secret by Edwin Bormann, 1895

I emailed Prof Nelson out of courtesy to inform him that I had broadcast his privately expressed views on the Northumberland Manuscript to the world on this blog (see entry below). He wrote back promptly telling me to do what I like, that he had more important things to work on and not to contact him anymore! Here we have a perfect microscosm of the orthodox authorship position. Confronted with the undeniable evidence of Bacon's authorship, the Stratfordian can only refuse to face it. The Northumberland Manucript is a forbidden uncomfortable provocative document which at a stroke solves and determines this entire supposedly indeterminable puzzle. There can be no possible alternative interpretation of it's implication. It belonged to Bacon. It has his name and Shakespeare's all over it it. It was the cover to a bundle of manuscripts which included both works by Bacon and plays of Shakespeare. And it explicity identifies Bacon as the author of these Shakespeare plays. Think about it: here were the only known existing Shakespeare manuscripts, nestled beneath the cover which attests to their origin. This is what everyone has been searching for, the Holy Grail of Shakespeare studies. And yet, here now, in 2004, is a Professor of English Literature who has devoted his careeer to defending the proposition that William Shaxper of Stratford was the author, who simply can't handle admitting that this evidence exists. This is emotional armouring of the worst kind; the rigidified reaction of denial in the face of a physical fact which flatly and completely undermines belief. If it wasn't so tragic it would be hilarious. Oxfordians: don't you laugh too loudly either. The Northumberland Manuscript is just as threatening to your doomed cause. If this document had belonged to the Earl, and had his name on it everywhere that Bacon's appears, of course it would be loudly trumpeted and triumphantly brandished as the long-sought-for "smoking gun". But as it proves the Baconian case, it is, like the rest of the evidence, simply ignored. I am beginning to understand that the so-called authorship question is not a matter of lack of evidence or communication or logic. It is an emotional and psychological phenomenon. The Stratfordian and Oxfordian positions support and maintain careers and other deep emotional investments, and thereby, like all false cults or worn-out paradigms, cannot be overcome by mere accumulation of undeniable evidence and clear thinking. Thank you Professor Nelson for your exemplary demonstration of the head-in-the-sand attitude of the orthodox. I guess you won't be posting the Northumberland Manuscript to your witness page, as you said you would. Instead your page (here) seen in the light of Northumberland stands as a simple testament to how wrong the professional expert can be, no matter how seemingly watertight the presentation might seem. It simply ignores evidence to the contrary. Admit Northumberland, and the entire orthodox position falls apart.

The Northumberland Manuscript is in fact the one and only document from the entire Elizabethan era on which the names of Bacon and Shakespeare both appear. It is a remarkable fact that nowhere, for example, in Bacon's voluminous writings or correspondence does he ever mention Shakespeare's name. James Spedding, Bacon's indefatigable nineteenth century biographer concludes from this that Bacon never met, or was even aware of, Shakespeare's existence. However, Spedding himself was unaware of the existence of the Northumberland Manuscript, which casts the problem in an entirely different light. It is impossible to conceive that Bacon could not have been aware of Shakespeare's existence. Here were the two outstanding geniuses of the day, both living and working in a city of 250,000 people during the same period of time. The plays of Shakespeare were the talk of the town, and performed frequently at court, where Bacon was a constant presence. Moreover, Ben Johnson was a concrete link between the two. Johnson was a close friend of Bacon's, even living in his house for five years. He was also intimately involved with the production of the First Folio, as his poems in tribute included in the prefatory material attest. Therefore, given the mutual connection of Ben Johnson, and given the existence of the Northumberland Manuscript which puts the two names together, it is obvious that there must be another reason for Bacon's silence in regard to Shakespeare's name, and that Spedding's contention that they were mutually unaware of each other is impossible to sustain. The only possible conclusion which takes into account these facts is that it was an intentional silence. And here now we step across the threshold of the solution to the mystery.

"Henry Paul, who informs the reader that Buchanan's Historia Scotica, and Hector Boece's Historia Scotorum were used as source material for Shakespeare's Macbeth, may not be aware that copies of both these books containing Bacon's inked annotations exist, and that these annotations show Bacon's special interest in the Macbeth theme. On a page of Buchanan containing the story of Macbeth, Bacon has written "Macbethi, Macbetho, and Macbethus Tyrannus, and Bancho rigiae caedis." Many of the words in the text are underlined. And in a copy of Boece dated 1575, Bacon has written the genealogy of the Scottish Kings descended from Banquo "to, and including James V, comprising seven kings." And in his Natural History, Bacon shows the same interest in strange parts of animals that Shakespeare must have had to write the witches' scenes."
- from this review of The Royal Play of Macbeth by Henry N Paul

Using a simple alphabet cipher based on the 24 letter Elizabethan alphabet, (as shown here), "Francis" adds to 67, "Bacon" to 33, and therefore "Francis Bacon" equates to 100. This cipher is found throughout the Shakespeare, Bacon and related works, as detailed extensively for example in the remarkable book "Secret Shakespearean Seals", on-line at the link in the sidebar.
It is remarkable that the word "Sonnets" also equates to 100. Given that "Shakespeare's" may be read as "Shakespeare is", this means that the title "Shakespeare's Sonnets" is equivalent by cipher substitution to "Shakespeare is Francis Bacon"!

Prof Alan H. Nelson of UC Berkeley has a website defending the orthodox authorship position here. On this page, he cites 8 contemporary Elizabethan documents as "witnesses" in order to demonstrate that William Shaxper the Stratford actor was known in his lifetime as the author of the Plays. He asserts that as at least some of the owners of these documents must have been in a position to know the truth, this proves that Shaxper wrote the works. I wrote to him to point out that he had overlooked a relevant contemporary document: the Northumberland Manuscript. On refreshing his memory by looking at it (here) he expressed the opinion in private email to me that this also proved his point, as above the names of the plays Richard II and III appear the words "William Shakespeare". Amazed by his myopia, I pointed out that, apart from the fact that the document belonged to Bacon and included both works by him and "Shakespeare", right next to these words are Francis Bacon's name, so that what it actually says of Richard II and III is that they are "By Mr Francis Bacon William Shakespeare". I asked him how he could explain the presence of Bacon's name in this provocative location if Bacon had nothing to do with the authorship of Shakespeare, as he claims. He replied that he had "no idea" why it should be there, but that he "didn't need to explain everything", even while he continues to assert on his website that Bacon had nothing to do with the Shakespeare works.

I invited him, if he truly believed that the Northumberland Manuscript could be cited as evidence for Shaxper's authorship, to post this as the ninth example to his witness page and be prepared to put on record publicly his privately expressed opininion that Northumberland supports the orthodox position. He wrote to me that he would do this as soon as he had some time. But as of this writing, months later, and despite a couple of friendly reminders, he has not yet done so. Why not write to him and ask why not?