A Taste of Bacon Sir? - The Secret of Shakespeare

[Steve Franklin]

On your puzzle about Marlowe, have you considered his membership to the secret society the School of Night which is said to have been close to the Rosicrucians?

I mention this only as an aside, but it was/is certainly the case in Freemasonry that important esoteric possessions of a brother who has passed are gathered together by his Lodge members and taken away.

Of course, Walsingham was a highly secretive man, as the Queen's spymaster and the forerunner of 007. :hock:: I have often pondered the question of whether he was, himself, a member of the Rosicrucians? I can find nothing to even hint that he was, so probably not. But it is self evident that the British Secret Service - which grew from him - have a long history of occult connections, as witnessed by their "eye in the triangle" logo:

First, I am aware of the "Shake-Spear" meme. This has been floating around the anti-Stratfordian world for a while now. I have not reached any conclusions on this yet. But keep in mind that there were 8 non-canonical plays published under "William Shakespeare," "W. Shakespeare," and "W. S." between 1595 and 1611. Also keep in mind that "Shake-speare" and "Shaks-pere" are different names with different meanings, so in either case Shakespeare is a nom-de-plume, whether meant to call to mind Shakspere or not. The widely flaunted Elizabethan spelling fluctuations never approached Shakespeare as a variation.

The original Thomas Mendenhall study was actually commissioned by someone trying to demonstrate that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare. The article in The Popular Science Monthly is here. Bacon failed the test by a wide margin. Now it has been argued that comparing Bacon's philosophical and scientific works with "Shakespeare's" fictional works would give different results, but notice that Bacon's word usage peaks sharply at 3 words, whereas "Shakespeare's" fictional usage peaks less sharply at 4 words. One would expect that if Bacon had written Shakespeare, his average word usage would have grown even shorter, fiction being less technical than non-fiction. And again, Marlowe's usage mirrors "Shakespeare's" precisely, even closer than the sonnets mirror the plays.

As for secret societies, I have no problem with associating any historical figure with one or another of these, especially in times of danger from the religious and civil authorities. Look at the American Revolution and the membership of many of these gentlemen in the Freemasons. I am, however, trying to keep my research focused on literary and exoteric data, at least for the moment. The mystery of "Shakespeare" is that, though supposedly a commoner, he understood the workings of the royal court and the idiosyncracies of its members, not the hidden knowledge they might have picked up as members of some underground association. I have no intent to impune your interests. I am just trying to steer clear of their target. For now, Occam must rule. In terms of the tarot, however, where there is little exoteric evidence between Pythagoras and Sister Manfreda, I am open to esoteric evidence.