Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide - Nick Groom, Piero 2013

Other Bacon Partisans

Baconianism was most energetically (if insanely) promoted in the 19th century by an American autodidact, Delia Bacon. Staying with the influential Victorian critic Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), she declared …

MUCH AS I RESPECT YOU, MR CARLYLE, I MUST TELL YOU THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS REALLY IN THE PLAYS IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THAT BOOBY WROTE THEM. I SIMPLY LAUGHED MY HEAD OFF …

But she had her supporters, and even spent an evening in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford …

Ex-Prime Minister and bellicose Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston became a convert to Baconianism via the work of William Henry Smith.

I HOPE THE SEXTON MAY GO, SO I CAN START DIGGING UP THE BACONIAN EVIDENCE! THE EXPLOSION OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN ILLUSIONS IS COMPARABLE IN IMPORTANCE TO THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY AND THE OPENING OF TRADE ROUTES WITH THE FAR EAST.