A Taste of Bacon Sir? - The Secret of Shakespeare

[David Guyatt]

Back to Shakespeare and Bacon et al.

My interest in this particular debate is fairly recent (2003). From my father effects following his death I obtained and read a book he had titled Arcadia, by Paul Dawkins, and published under the imprint of The Francis Bacon Research Trust Journal, Series 1, Vol 5, that deals with the "Life and Times of Francis Bacon, 1579-1585". It is named Arcadia because it claims to teach the "Ancient Egyptian Mysteries - Arcadia and the Arcadian Academy". My father was a Co-Mason (as was my mother too), and I think it likely he obtained this book during his Masonic studies - although he had previously studied esoterica for many years and was a senior member of an occult school, whereas my mother was Wicca. One might, therefore, imagine that I was doomed from the beginning - but the fact is I introduced my father to the occult school and that, in turn, opened the door for my mother to study Wicca, which she had long had a background interest in. I am, therefore, no innocent in this.

In any event, this is an interesting book and there is a lot of information therein which I have not come across outside on the internet. For example, the author states that Robert Dudley and QE1 conceived Francis Bacon, but politically couldn't admit to having born a child (two, in fact) and therefore, it wads arranged for the child Francis to be secretly adopted by Sir Nicholas Bacon. It is thought that the bacon family derived from the French/Norman Bascoigne family which were the Lords of Molay in France. This family came to fame because of Jacques de Molay, the last publicly known Grandmaster of the Knights Templar (and, of course, their oracular skull of Sidon that was called Baphomet. Perhaps, or perhaps not, this might be why a skull appears in Shakespeare play Hamlet attributed to Yorick with the meditative worlds "Alas, poor Yorick, for I knew, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest."


Eugene Delacroix's Hamlet contemplating Yorick

But this is not the only picture of a skull in Shakespeare. In his poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, Shakespeare dedicated the poem to the son of Katheryn of Berain, John Salusbury.


Portrait of Katheryn of Berain by Adriaen van Cronenburgh

Yorick was the dead court jester, and if we reference the Tarot book written by Jungian Sallie Nichols above, and in particular refer to the online copy of her chapter on the Tarot trump, The Fool, we learn that the Court Jester is attributed to that card.

Below is an image of the emblem of Pallas Athena from the title page of Nova Atlantis



Is that a jester's head sitting at the foot of the tree?

Pallas Athena is the British Goddess, Britannia btw: