The arguments, which have appeared in the Arena in this "celebrated case," are much like the encyclopedias and biographies of the present day, which devote page after page to Shakespeare--all conspicuous for the absence of proven facts--full of surmises, conjectures, "probably was" and "might have beens." Col. Robert Ingersoll, in his eloquent lecture on Shakespeare, says that "the known facts concerning the great poet could be condensed in a dozen lines," and then proceeds to build up in poetic imaginings, from the plays attributed to Shakespeare, an environment and history, which are in no way substantiated.

I claim, and it has been my good fortune to find an overwhelming series of proofs, that Bacon was the author, not only of the plays credited to Shakespeare, but those also of George Peele, Christopher Marlow and Robert Greene, and the works of Burton and Spenser.

This startling statement (with the exception of Spenser’s Faerie-Queene) has been before advanced by Mrs. Pott, William White, J. E. Roe and others, but none of these authors has ever produced the proofs, taken from the plays, allegories, or prose works, of their claims. The keys and cipher have now been found, which unlock the strangely hidden writings, and the hidden story is being rapidly deciphered. I offer as evidence the works themselves as proof of the single authorship, and I request the readers to set aside the different names upon the title pages, and ask themselves whether two or more men could have written so exactly alike.

Turning to Love’s Labour’s Lost, on page 141 of the 1623 Folio Edition, of the so-called Shakespeare Plays, we read:

"There is five in the first shew,

This "Ship" has no relevance or meaning in this connection, but we find that Sir Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum has an allegorical frontispiece representing a ship full rigged, sailing directly at the reader.

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Analyzing these lines, we find that "The Boy Abate," leaves but four names; "Novum" would make the five; then, of the "five in the first show," one is a "Pedant," another is a "Braggart," the next a "Hedge-Priest," the fourth a "Foole," and the fifth "Novum."

Follow this with two quotations from Hamlet, page 258:

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,

Page 263:

"There is something in this more than Naturall, if Philosophie could finde it out."

The Winters Tale, page 298:

What did Shakespeare mean by speaking so plainly of the "Novum," which was not published until 1623? If William Shakespeare wrote the Plays, in what line of thought was his mind working, when he spoke of "My Advancement," "Our Philosophy," and of "The Novum"? Bacon was the only man at that time who was writing an "Advancement of Learning," and a "Natural Philosophy."

The other four authors mentioned in the first quotation are easily discovered by the names Bacon gives them.

Robert Burton was born February 8th, 1576, and was a "Pedant" at Cambridge.

Robert Greene in 1584 held a living in Essex, resigned in 1585, and became a drunken "Hedge-Priest."

Christopher Marlow boasted that he could perform all the miracles of the prophets, and such a "Braggart" was he, that he was cited before the Ecclesiastical Court.

Shakespeare was called an "upstart crow decked in our feathers," and in the eulogy of Ben Jonson, so often used, are these very sarcastic lines:

"And though thou hadst small Latine and lesse Greeke."

This eulogy by Ben Jonson, himself the Secretary of Bacon, is, when closely read, a most ironical, sarcastic and fitting introduction to the accrediting of such literary productions to the son of John Shakespeare, who could neither read nor write, and whose signature was a thumb blot. There is nothing in the antecedents or in the known career of William Shakespeare to make it possible to believe him a great author. Of this the discussions in the Arena have given ample evidence.

If I was right in the surmise that Bacon, Burton, Greene, Marlow and Shakespeare were the "five in the first show," then

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the study of these together might be profitable; and what did that study disclose? Through them all I found concordant lines, similar paragraphs, absolutely identical words, and thoughts that could have emanated but from one and the same brain.

I found the names "Francis," "Bacon," frequently recurring. I found the key words, "Fortune," "Nature," "Honor," and "Reputation," repeated in these works, by count 10,641 times, and about them revolved the cues for shifting to the different works, which properly joined together, formed connected and continuous stories most marvelous and entrancing.

I found, to my surprise, that the Anatomy of Melancholy, attributed to Robert Burton, was first issued in 1586, with "Bright T.," as its author. Burton was but ten years of age at this time, and must, indeed, have been a precocious child to have written such a wonderful work at that age. Bacon was at that time twenty-six, and a scholar of note. In the edition of the Anatomy, published in 1617, or 1622, occurs the following:

"Our noble and learned Lord Verulam, in his book De Vite et Morte, commends therefore all such cold smells."

The Historia Vitæ et Mortis, was published in 1623, and was written by Francis Bacon.

That there is a cipher in the plays is plainly told in Love’s Labor’s Lost, pages 124 and 125:

"Now here’s three studied, ere you’ll thrice wink, and how easie it is to put yeres to the word three, and study three yeeres in two words, the dancing-horse will tell you."

The "Dancing Horse," Morrocco, was owned by a man called Cuddie Banks. Bullen calls attention to the fact that the dramatic writers, mentioned here, have all written about this "dancing horse." Thus it makes:

"A most fine Figure, to prove you a Cypher."

The student of Shakespeare has been puzzled to understand the meaning of many passages in the Plays--and the following passage from Love’s Labor’s Lost, page 136, has been a stumbling block--a curiosity in words, a meaningless jargon at best, by any known rules of construction:

"I marvel thy M. hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitu-dinitatibus. Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon."

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"The last of the five vowels if You repeat them or the fift if I.

Let us scan with an eye to a hidden meaning. The word "Master," is abbreviated "M." for the purpose of dividing the long word into another line at the letter "u," which he calls attention to four times. First, in the line, "The last of the five vowels, if You repeat them, or the fift if I." The fifth vowel and the last vowel are the same, and a capital "Y" at the beginning of the word "You," is absolutely wrong, except as meaning "u." A sheep’s horn is the letter "c," and what is "a b" spelled backwards with a horn, "b a c?" But spelled backwards from the letter "u," which has been so plainly indicated, it reads thus:

"Utilibacifir on o," spacing, it reads "U til I B A cifir on O."

The fool in King Lear, page 288, says:

Let us again question the long word, and still read it backwards. It will be found absolutely impossible to make the word "William," or the two words "Shake," "Speare." But strangely enough, as an imperfect anagram, the letters will spell "Sir Francis Bacon," "Viscount St. Albans."

Many strange passages like the preceding occur in the Plays, having no meaning or relation to what precedes or follows. Though abnormal and entirely out of place where they occur, they are found in deciphering the hidden writings to be necessary to the construction of the connected Cipher Story.

An instance occurs in Love’s Labor’s Lost, Act III., Scene I. The first thirty lines are without sense or meaning. Another instance in Winter’s Tale, Act IV., Scene 3, where Autolycus reenters and tells of the sale of his trumpery. Portions of both these passages are necessary, and are used in the Cipher construction of the opening letter in the deciphered story of Sir Francis Bacon’s life. These passages were placed in the Plays for the purposes of the Cipher, and not for the requirements, or the sense, of the Plays themselves.

In the Comedy of Errors, page 99:

"One of these men is genius to the other,

The prologue of Henry the Fifth:

"And let us, Cyphers to this great accompt, * * *

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The prologue of Troylus and Cressida:

"Beginning in the middle, starting thence away,"

Turning to the wrongly numbered page 58 in the Merry Wives of Windsor:

" * * * heere, heere, heere, bee my keyes, ascend my Chambers, search, seeke, finde out: Ile warrant wee’le unkennell the Fox."

We ascend and find:

"Mistress Page, remember you your cue."

Again, in Midsummer Night’s Dream, page 152:

On page 158:

"When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer."

Henry the Fifth, page 81:

"I speak now upon my cue."

Turn to Peele’s Arraignment of Paris:

"Sh’ath capp’d his answer in the cue."

Finding the word cipher and cue run through the Plays, a line on page 99 of Henry the Fourth,

"’Tis all in every part."

is brought to mind, and we turn to the works of Bacon and read:

"There be three requisites of a cipher, that they be easy to read and write, hard to decipher, and without suspicion."

We have read that you are to remember your cue; that when it is called someone will appear; that someone speaks upon his cue; and, as in the concordant line, the word "Fortune" begins with a capital F, it may be such cue. We have received the order to begin in the middle.

The plays are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies, the histories being in the middle. The first historical play is King John. We hunt for the word "Fortune" in King John, and find these lines:

Turn the page, and at the first "Fortune," read:

"Nature and Fortune joyn’d to make thee great."

Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar and George Peele’s Paris have these unusual words, carried by Bacon as concordants: "Thenot, Diggon, Hobinall, Colin Clout, Thominal." The Faerie-Queene, Peele’s Old Wives Tale, and Greene’s Orlando Furioso have the same character--"Sacrapant." As You Like It

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and Orlando Furioso have Orlando hanging songs and roundelays on the trees of the forest of Arden. Orlando Furioso, Peele’s Paris, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Troylus and Cressida and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy name the same characters. The Faerie-Queene, Orlando and Paris have the character "Cynthia." The Rape of Lucrece is called attention to in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Act I., Scene I.

In Merry Wives of Windsor, page 57:

Doctor Faustus, Scene III., Act I., has four lines of the octavo edition of the Taming of the Shrew, word for word.

Five lines of Scene IV., Act IV., Tamburlaine II. are, with slight variations, stanza 32 first book, seventh canto, of the Faerie-Queene.

Two verses of the Faerie-Queene are copied in the Anatomy of Melancholy.

In Henry Sixth, part first, page 98, we read:

"Now am I like that proud insulting ship,

In Peele’s Farewell:

"You beare," quoth he, "Cæsar and Cæsar’s fortunes in your ship."

In Bacon’s Essay on Fortune, in his Advancement of Learning, De Augmentis, and Colours of Good and Evil, the same line,

"As Cæsar said to the Pilot, you carry Cæsar and his fortunes."

In Bacon’s Essay on Friendship,

"For when Cæsar would have discharged the Senate in regard of some ill presages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man [Decimus Brutus] lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the Senate until his wife had dreampt a better dream."

In the play of Julius Cæsar, page 117, Decimus Brutus says:

" * * * Besides, it were a mocke

In Bacon’s Essay on Prophecy:

"A phantasm that appeared to M. Brutus in his tent said to him, Philippis iterum me videbis."

Julius Cæsar, page 126:

"Speak to me what thou art!"

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Bacon’s Essay on Prophecy:

"Henry the Sixth of England said to Henry the Seventh, when he was a lad and gave him water, ‘This is the lad that shall enjoy the crown for which we strive."

In Henry the Seventh, page 168:

"It is young Henry, Earl of Richmond, come hither England’s hope. * * * This pretty lad will prove our country’s bliss * * * and himself likely in time to bless a regal throne, * * * his head by nature framed to wear a crown."

Bacon’s Essay on Masks:

"The colours that show best by candle light are white, carnation, and a kind of sea water green."

In Love’s Labor’s Lost, page 125:

"Of the sea-water-green, Sir."

As You Like It, page 198:

"Would you not have me honest?"

In Bacon’s Essay on Beauty:

"Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set, and surely virtue is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features."

In Timon of Athens, page 97:

"I have a Tree which growes heere in my Close,

Bacon’s Essay on Goodness and Goodness of Nature:

"Misanthropi that maketh their practice to bring men to the Bough and yet have never a Tree for the purpose in their garden as Timon had."

The word "garden" turns us to the Essay on Gardens, where a foot-note of Mr. Spedding says:

"The scene in the Winter’s Tale, where Perdita presents the guests with flowers, suited to their ages, has some expressions, which, if this Essay had been contained in the earlier editions, would have made me suspect that Shakespeare had been reading it."

In Bacon’s Essay on Prophecy:

"’Twas generally conceived to be meant of the Spanish fleet that came in ’88, for that the King of Spain’s sur-name, as they say, is ‘Norway.’"

Comedy of Errors, page 92:

" * * * declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain, who sent whole armadoes of carrects to be ballast at her nose."

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Love’s Labor’s Lost, page 123:

"A letter from the magnificent Armado."

King John, page 12:

"So by a roaring Tempest on the flood.

Peele’s Farewell to Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris is too long to quote; it was, however, written in 1589.

The story of the Spanish Armada, the claims of Philip to the throne of England, and to the hand of Elizabeth, are fully given in cipher.

The last proof which I will offer in this article, showing that the Plays and the works of Bacon must have been from the same hand and brain, will be the comparison of quotations from three different volumes, upon the same subject--the circulation of the blood.

Bacon’s History of Life and Death, published in 1623, translated by Spedding, Ellis & Heath.

Shakespeare died in 1616, and by his biographers is said to have ceased writing in 1612. The Folio appeared in 1623, with six plays added never before heard of, and twelve others mentioned, but never published.

Bacon, according to his tombstone, died in 1626.

William Harvey graduated at Padua, was appointed Lumlian Professor at Bartholemew College Hospital in 1615; discovered the circulation of the blood in 1616; announced the discovery in 1619; and published it in 1628. This preliminary history is necessary for the understanding of the extraordinary things which follow.

The Play of Coriolanus, page 2:

"And fit it is because I am the store house and shop of the whole body."

Bacon’s Life and Death:

" * * * Do in the end destroy the workshop of the body with its machines and organs, and make them incapable of repair."

Harvey’s Works:

" * * * Which it contains in ample quantity, as the head of the veins, the store house and cistern of the blood. Because the blood has its fountain and store house and the work shop of the last perfection in the heart and lungs."

Coriolanus:

"But if you do remember I send it through the rivers of your blood,

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"Receive that natural competencie whereby they live,

Bacon’s Life and Death:

"And the spirit is repaired from the fresh and lively blood of the small arteries which are inserted into the brain. Veins, bones, cartilages, most of the bowels and nearly all the organic parts are repaired. The spirit requires room for its motion in the ventricles of the brain and the nerves perpetually."

Harvey’s works:

"The one action of the heart is the transmission of the blood and its distribution by means of the arteries to the very extremity of the body, so that the pulse which we feel in the arteries is nothing more than the impulse of the blood derived from the heart. The blood is transfused through the ventricles from the veins to the arteries and distributed by them through all parts of the body."

Romeo and Juliet, page 171:

Henry the Fourth, page 92:

"And inland, pettie spirits muster me all to their Captain, the heart."

Love’s Labor’s Lost:

"A hand, a face, a foot, an eye, a brow, a breast, a waist, a leg, a limb."

Bacon’s Life and Death:

"Pulsations of the heart occur every third part of a moment and respirations every moment * * * The actions or functions of the individual members follow the needs of the members themselves, as attraction, retention, digestion, assimilation, perspiration, and even the sense itself depends upon the properties of the several organs, as the stomach, liver, heart, spleen, gall, brain, eye, ear and the rest, but yet none of these actions without the vigor, presence and heat of the vital spirit.

Harvey’s Works:

"What I have already proposed in regard to the pulse of the heart and arteries, namely, the passage of the blood from the veins to the arteries and its distribution through the whole body by means of these vessels whence it returns to its sovereign, the heart. * * * Nay, has not the blood itself, or spirit, an obscure palpation. * * * The heart consequently, is the beginning of life, the Sun of the microcosm; here it resumes its due fluidity, and receives an infusion of natural heat."

Love’s Labor’s Lost:

"Universal plodding poisons up the nimble spirits in the arteries.

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Henry the Sixth, second part:

"See how the blood is settled in his face;

Bacon’s Life and Death:

"The heart receives the most benefit or injury from the air we breathe, from the vapors and from passions. * * * The interval at which nature repeats the act of inspiration, and desires to expel the foul air received into the lungs and take in fresh, are very short, scarce the third part of a minute. Again, the pulsation of the arteries and the contraction and dilation of the heart is, in motion, three times more rapid than respiration, so that if it were possible, without hindering the respiration to stop this motion of the heart death would insue quicker than by strangulation. * * * The continuous and copious effusion of blood such as sometimes takes place in hemorrhoids, sometimes in vomiting of blood, from opening or rupture of the inner veins, and sometimes in wounds, causes speedy death, for the blood of the veins supplies the blood of the arteries, which again supplies the spirit."

Harvey’s Works:

"The pendent or lower parts of a corpse become of a dusky hue, but how can parts attract in which the heat and life are almost extinct * * * which on the contrary in contact with these parts becomes cooled, coagulated, and so to speak, effete. * * * And indeed hemorrhages of every kind."

Merchant of Venice:

"A messenger, with letters from the doctor, new come from Padua."

Henry the Fourth, part first:

"Fallstaffe Harvey,"

Merry Wives of Windsor:

"Master Doctor Caius,"

Harvey’s Works:

Marlow’s Tamburline, Act IV., Scene 2:

"May never spirit, vein or artier feed

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Is it possible that Shakespeare could have written one-half the account of the circulation of the blood before it was discovered? Would Bacon have written only one-half the account in his acknowledged writings? Would three men have used the same words as "storehouse," "work shop," "attract," "cools," "spirit," "captain, the heart," "sovereign, the heart," concerning the same subject? Could it have been possible that three men wrote so nearly alike that if the parallels are read aloud no one can tell from which work they are taken. Is it not probable that Bacon was present at the demonstrations with the rest of the Court of King James, and did he not then write down the results, putting a part in Shakespeare and a part in his acknowledged writings?

As Bacon was a patient of Harvey’s, and a great reader of ancient authors, may it not be possible that he helped Harvey from the first inception? Will any one deny the parallels between the three? Then, who wrote them?

In conclusion, let us sum up the questions as herein elucidated. We find concordant lines, similar paragraphs, and absolute words and thoughts, that are peculiar in themselves, and could have emanated but from one brain. In "As You Like It," and in the Essay on "Beauty," and in "Hamlet," that a handsome and beautiful woman was not and could not be honest and virtuous. It is beyond the thought of man that two men should have, at different periods, brought forth the same idea of virtue and beauty, an idea which is horrible, and showing a low grade of virtue in the handsome and better class of women of his day. Further, in concordant words, the names of the Essays, the names of the Plays, the names of the philosophical and educational works, were not placed in Shakespeare’s plays by chance. They are so absolutely abnormal, that in the editions of our day, "Throw at Novum," is usually changed to "A Throw at Novum;" "our philosophy" is changed to "your philosophy." No one before this has ever called attention to the fact, that by the name of an Essay, or Philosophical work in the Plays, or in the name of a play in Bacon’s works, we are directed to go to that play, or to the Philosophical works of Bacon, to find concordant, correspondent, con-natural, similar or parallel lines, sentences or words.

Either Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare were the same man, at least so far as the writings are concerned, or else for once in the history of mankind, two men absolutely dissimilar in birth, in education and in bringing up, had the same thoughts, used the same words, piled up the same ideas, wrote upon the same subjects, and thought, wrote, talked and dreamed absolutely alike

ORVILLE W. OWEN, M. D.

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