Shakespeare's Rosicrucian Sources

The complex manuscript of Sir Thomas More written by Bacon was produced in his literary workshop in a process that saw him direct its various scribes and copyists as it evolved over a period of many years which accounts to a large extent for its complicated state. The so-called Original Text comprising sixteen leaves is a fair copy or transcription of his manuscript (‘foul papers’) or a copy of the complete play as he initially first conceived it. The Additions some directly dictated by Bacon to his scribes and the copyists working from earlier drafts required later revisions and amendments and other forms of authorial and editorial intervention. Some aspects of the seemingly impenetrable and intractable problems the manuscript gives rise to may never be fully or satisfactorily resolved. Most importantly, however, more than four hundred years after its original composition the overwhelming and irrefutable evidence much of it produced here for the first time confirms beyond any doubt that the Shakespeare play Sir Thomas More was written by Francis Bacon our secret Shakespeare.

In an attempt to produce a reconstruction of the genealogy of the sources, this essay investigates the relationship between Measure for Measure and the Gospel of Matthew, examining in particular the possibility that the episode related to Claudio’s supposed beheading is somehow associated with the death of John the Baptist, as recorded in Matthew 14:1-12. In Shakespeare as well as in the Evangelist’s text, the request for the head is charged with a highly symbolic value: it is a visualization of the triumph, the gift that the instigator makes to his own superiority, a narcissistic gratification. It is an expression of personal affirmation; an acknowledgment of one’s own power and of the capacity to make it operative. Doing violence becomes an investigation of one’s own political force. It represents the violation of the corpse, the desecration of the relic. But it is also an appalling solution to put to rest any possible accusation related to immoral or illicit relationships condemned by the law. Moreover, it is a violent act, secretly perpetrated, with neither moral purposes nor royal warning.

Shakespeare's Measure for Measure comprises moral issues concerning corruption, virtue, justice, and purity. Angelo, a conspicuous character of the play, holds the position of Deputy and representative of the law but his conscience is tormented by a psychological conflict around the desire to bribe a young and innocent lady, Isabella, for his own interest and pleasure. The aim of this paper is to inspect the mental distress of Angelo's moral conscience in relation to Sigmund Freud's models of functioning of the human mind and most prominently Sri Aurobindo's psychology. This attempt is an action that can eventually help to cope with Angelo's personal distress. And these theories of functioning of the mind give a significant contribution to the understanding of the psychological conflict that may occur in an individual when tormented by moral questions. The dialogues of Angelo with other characters in the play clearly represent the relationship between moral reflection and the psychological effects on the psyche.

In 1623 Francis Bacon with his scriptorium or literary workshop housed at Gorhambury staffed by his good pens among them the poet George Herbert and the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, were busy working on the Shakespeare First Folio which was then making its way through the Jaggard printing house. On its publication in November 1623, it carried a dedication to the Grand Master of England William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. 
 
It was only a little over a year after the publication of his Shakespeare First Folio that Bacon started preparing for his final Last Will and Testament. After consultations with those close to him and dealing with some practical arrangements he commenced the formal process of making a will on 23 May 1625 of such detail and complexity that it was not completed until six months later in the December. In an earlier draft of his will the lawyer Edward Herbert (a cousin of the poet George Herbert a contributor to the Memoriae and the Herbert brothers to whom Bacon dedicated the Shakespeare First Folio) was charged with overseeing which of his manuscripts should be published and which should be suppressed. In the final document Bacon addresses himself to future ages followed by some very pregnant instructions still shrouded in secrecy and unresolved to the present day. He bequeaths to the care of Bishop of London John Williams (a contributor to the Memoriae) his letters, speeches and other papers touching matters of state some of which Bacon did not want published but nevertheless wished them to be kept in private hands in safe keeping. By this Bacon meant to use his own words of reserving part to a private succession, namely his Rosicrucian-Freemasonry Brotherhood, who down the centuries have very carefully watched over Bacon’s secret life and writings, including the manuscripts of his Shakespeare poems and plays. In his will he also desired his executors Sir John Constable and Sir William Boswell (a contributor to the Memoriae) to take into their possession all his papers in his cabinets, boxes, and presses, and to seal them up until they had the leisure to peruse them. In December 1625 his last will and testament was signed in the presence of his private secretary
and Rosicrucian Brother Dr William Rawley, who had lived with Bacon for the last ten years of his life, who had access to the majority of his literary manuscripts, including the manuscripts of his Shakespeare plays, which were placed into his hands to be kept concealed from public view until his Rosicrucian-Freemasonry Brotherhood decide to reveal the hidden truth to posterity and the world.

In the months following Bacon’s death to the profane world his trusted Rosicrucian Brother Dr William Rawley gathered together and quietly issued a commemorative work in his honour entitled Memoriae honoratissimi Domini Francisci, Baronis de Verulamio, vice-comitis Sancti Albani sacrum. This rare and still virtually unknown work contains thirty-two Latin verses in praise of Bacon, which his orthodox editors and biographers have simply glossed over, ignored, or suppressed, that portray Bacon as a secret supreme poet and dramatist, the writer of comedies and tragedies, under the pseudonym of Shakespeare. 

The Shakespeare monument at Stratford-upon-Avon secretly commissioned by Bacon to which the Memoriae is inextricably linked is replete with Rosicrucian-Freemasonry symbolism serving as a memorial to Francis Bacon our secret Shakespeare. It knowingly echoes verses in the Memoriae, and as with the Shakespeare First Folio that is dedicated to the Grand Master of England, it is replete with Baconian-Rosicrucian-Freemasonic symbolism and cryptic devices, which read and deciphered repeatedly reveal and confirm that Bacon is Shakespeare.

Several centuries later the English translations of the Memoriae containing the 32 Latin verses portraying Bacon as Shakespeare are here made readily available and accessible for the first time, enabling Bacon and Shakespeare scholars, all interested students of English literature and the rest of the world, to read for themselves a work revealing the secret of the true authorship of the Shakespeare works, one kept from them for the last four hundred years.

Holy War CRAIG M. RUSTICI J ames Bonwick, a nineteenth-century historian of Tasmania, notes that when "Dr Wardell of Sydney defended an Englishman charged with the murder of a Black, he argued from Lord Bacon, Pufendorf, and Barbeyrae, that savages who fed upon human flesh (as the Australians were by him assured to do), were proscribed by the law of nature; consequently it was no offense to slay them." Ironies as well as horrors surround this brief report. In his argument, Dr. Wardell, presumably Robert Wardell, founding proprietor of the weekly Australian, alluded not to one of Bacon's legal treatises or judicial decisions but to an incomplete dialogue Bacon composed in 1622 after his fall from high public office, not to an opinion Bacon articulated directly but to one he ascribed to a fictional character, and, I will argue, not to an opinion Bacon wished to endorse but to one he wished to repudiate.Î n this dialogue. An Advertisement touching an Holy War, Bacon assembles six interlocutors with different occupations and different religious convictions. The interlocutors agree to discuss just war, and they devote particular attention to the Spanish conquest of America and to a projected war against the Turks. One interlocutor, Eupolis, projects an elaborate structure for their discussion, and each agrees to explore a particular point. In the course of this discussion, they consider secular and religious justifications of war and debate the nature of non-Christian, non-European cultures. The dialogue breaks off in the first of the six projected discourses after the interlocutor Zebedaeus elaborates a mostly naturalistic defense of the conquest of America and of a war against the Ottoman Empire. By relating the Holy War to Bacon's other works and his career-long opposition to the Spanish empire, we can see that Wardell misread Bacon's intention. In this dialogue Bacon exploits his knowledge of sixteenth-century Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVIII, 4 (1992) 49

The Special Baconiana edition commemorating the 400 Year Anniversary of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio

On this day on 8 November 1623 the greatest secular book in the history of the world was entered on the Stationers' Register as the Shakespeare First Folio written and produced by Francis Bacon, the greatest poet and dramatist of all time.

To commemorate this incredible work The Francis Bacon Society (est. 1886) have published a special online edition of their journal Baconiana with 12 contributors providing 26 articles and videos drawn from different parts of the world - a truly international Baconian collaboration to celebrate this incomparable work and the greatest man who ever lived.

The Francis Bacon Society est. 1886 - become a member: https://francisbaconsociety.co.uk/

Approaching classical music as a sacred art form has proved therapeutic and enjoyable for residents of a Canadian retirement home, allowing individual seniors in a group setting to experience great beauty and harmony within themselves. Facilitating this with Adlerian principles of choice, equality, and social connectedness has been seen to reinvigorate perceptions of self in some, enhance feelings of belonging, as well as provide practical tools to help reset moods and memories when desired. Such evidence-based music programs have the potential to be an effective model with which to implement the mental health and social connectedness goals of the WHO's active ageing program to reduce the rising numbers of seniors developing dementia.

For the renowned German mystic Jacob Boehme (1575 - 1624), the principle of love or divine harmony is the triumphant result of a Cosmic process whose building blocks originate in desire, will, pain, and anguish. Boehme’s cosmology begins with the Ungrund or “Bottomless
Nothingness” which desires and wills to become something but suffers anguish and frustration when there is no outflow to bring about this harmony. This is Boehme’s First Principle of the Divine Essence, or Light, a principle which he calls “wrath” or “fiery anger,” which can be
related to disorder.Boehme’s Second Principle of Light arises where he sees a spark igniting and transforming the fiery anguish into harmony and light; be it in the microcosm of one’s own spiritual seeking, or in the macrocosm of an expanding universe. Boehme’s “spark” is shown here to be in accordance with Big Bang cosmology and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Boehme’s Third Principle of the Divine Essence sees the visible world as a dynamic interplay of these two opposing principles. Boehme is clear, the divine Christ light is available to all, regardless of outer religious affiliation.

Keywords: Mysticism, Jacob Boehme, Science, Nature, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, The Big Bang, Dissipative Adaptation of Matter

In ordinary circumstances this contemporary manuscript document named the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies would be well known to every Bacon and Shakespeare scholar and student of English literature around the world. Bacon’s unique private notebook held at the British Library contains a total of 51 leaves numbered pages 83 to 132 all written (apart from some French proverbs) in his own hand. The Folio numbered 85 is headed ‘Promus’ and beneath it appears the date ‘Dec. 5, 1594’ with the Folio numbered 114 headed ‘Formularies Promus’ carrying the date ‘27 Jan. 1595’ (i.e., January 1596).
It contains 1655 entries jotted down as an aid to his memory. The entries include single words, phrases, lines, turns of speech, metaphors, similes, aphorisms, and various moral and philosophical observations. These include entries drawn from the Bible; Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and English proverbs; and lines and verses from classical poets and dramatists, among them, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace, and Terence.
This private notebook was used by Bacon as a literary storehouse from where he developed, expanded, and introduced ideas and themes into his acknowledged writings and works. In Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light R. M. Theobald produced a list of around 500 Promus entries used by Bacon in his acknowledged writings, a number the orthodox scholar Charles Crawford stated could be significantly added to, and following his detailed study of the Promus in The Bacon Shakespeare Question N. B. Cockburn put the number at about 600. More recently, its modern editors Professor Stewart and Dr Knight in The Oxford Francis Bacon: Early Writings 1584-1596 (Oxford Clarendon Press, 2012) specified that during a period of thirty years Bacon utilised these entries in the Promus for usage in a diverse range of categories and genres that included his private letters, speeches, dramatic devices, essays, religio-political tracts, legal writings, and several of his philosophical and scientific works.
In 1883 the indefatigable Baconian scholar Constance M. Pott published her monumental work entitled The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (Being Private Notes, circ. 1594, hitherto unpublished) by Francis Bacon Illustrated and Elucidated by Passages from Shakespeare. In a work running to more than six hundred pages, Pott reproduced a full transcript of the entries in the Promus alongside hundreds of parallel passages from the Shakespeare poems and plays. This work has remained virtually unknown for the last one hundred and fifty years because it has been systematically ignored and misrepresented by orthodox Bacon and Shakespeare editors and commentators as it manifestly demonstrates that Bacon is Shakespeare. 
Now here for the first time (unknown to or expanded upon by Pott and other previous scholars and commentators) beyond paralleling hundreds of entries from Bacon’s notebook against his Shakespeare poems and plays, the present work will show how these sources used by Bacon, the Bible, Erasmus, Florio (Italian proverbs), Heywood (English proverbs), and especially the classical poets and dramatists Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace, and Terence, completely saturate his Shakespeare works, confirming beyond any doubt that he used his private notebook as an aid-to-memory and wellspring for his divine Shakespeare poems and plays.

Από την παρουσίαση στο οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου) "...Ένας αρχετυπικός μύθος. Μια εσωτερική παράδοση αιώνων που επιβίωσε και εξελίχτηκε παράλληλα με την επίσημη Ιστορία. Ένα μοναδικό στο είδος του βιβλίο που είχε εξαντληθεί και τώρα επανακυκλοφορεί σε αναθεωρημένη έκδοση... Παράλληλα με τη γνωστή ιστορία της Ευρώπης, στο βάθος, μια «άλλη» ιστορία υφαίνεται από τα πανάρχαια χρόνια μέχρι σήμερα, εξίσου σημαντική: η εξέλιξη του αρχετυπικού μυητικού μύθου. Από τις αρχαίες τελετές του Διόνυσου, του Ορφέα και της Μεγάλης Θεάς, μέχρι τον Χιράμ, τους Ναΐτες, τους Ροδόσταυρους, τους Τέκτονες, τους μυημένους στη Βασιλική Αψίδα και τους άλλους «Αγγέλους της Απώλειας», ο συγγραφέας ξετυλίγει το ιστορικό νήμα της απόκρυφης παράδοσης της Ευρώπης και αποκαλύπτει πώς επηρέασε το ιστορικό γίγνεσθαι της γηραιάς ηπείρου. Μέσα από άγνωστες ιστορίες αναζήτησης και πολυθρύλητα χαμένα μυστικά μας παρουσιάζει μια εξαιρετικά εμπεριστατωμένη μελέτη που έλλειπε από την ελληνική βιβλιογραφία!..

One of the less familiar dramas in the Shakespeare canon Measure for Measure has at its heart the God-like Rosicrucian figure of Duke Vincentio one akin to Prospero in The Tempest described by Dr Yates as a Rosicrucian manifesto. The role of the Duke is one of the longest roles in the Shakespeare canon. He is seen by many Shakespeare scholars as a surrogate of the dramatist himself with the joint Arden editors of Measure for Measure correctly maintaining that its author ‘sets up the correspondences between himself and the duke…extensively’, and that, Measure for Measure ‘persistently hints that the Duke is a playwright made in Shakespeare’s image’. Or put another way the secretive, complex and enigmatic character of Duke Vincentio, who adopts multiple masks, disguises and identities in Measure for Measure represents Shakespeare, that is to say, the true author of the play, who himself outside of the play itself, also adopts multiple identities and disguises behind his various literary living masks including the pseudonym of Shakespeare. The Duke is a complex dramatic portrait of his creator Francis Bacon, the supreme head of the Rosicrucian-Freemasonry Brotherhood, with the Duke in the play watching over Vienna just like Bacon, reflected in his Rosicrucian utopia New Atlantis, watches over the world and the future of mankind. In the play the Duke seeks to build a new, fair, and just society one based upon love just as Bacon with his Rosicrucian Brotherhood set in motion a plan for A Universal Reformation of the Whole World.
The intertwined themes of law and justice, sex and death, and the Rosicrucian-Freemasonry Brotherhood that are threaded all the way through Measure for Measure are mirrored and reflected in more than twenty of Bacon’s acknowledged writings and works, among them: unpublished manuscripts, private letters and speeches; his Meditationes Sacrae , Of Colours of Good and Evil, various essays including Of Judicature, Of Seditions and Troubles, and Of Death, one of the central themes of the play; as well as An Inquiry Concerning the Ways of Death and The History of Life and Death; the Gesta Grayorum and other dramatic devices; religious and political tracts including  A Confession of Faith and A Brief Discourse Touching the Happy Union of the Kingdom of England and Scotland; his major philosophical and scientific treatises The Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum and De Augmentis Scientiarum ; and several of his obscure or relatively unknown and unread legal treatises A Proclamation Touching the Marches, The Charge of Owen Indicted for High Treason, A Proposition Touching the Compiling and Amendments of Law, and Touching the Office of Constable; as well as his Rosicrucian utopia New Atlantis (or, The Land of the Rosicrucians) and the first Rosicrucian manifesto the Fama Fraternitatis.

A Morten St. George Investigation. This essay will provide a hundred instances of multiple thematic parallels between short segments (typically a range of five to thirty words) of the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe on the one hand and equally short segments of the Nostradamus prophecies on the other. It will also be shown that the Nostradamus connection was widespread, stretching across all plays of both playwrights, irrespective of play classification as drama, history, or comedy. It could be a noteworthy discovery: though numerous Shakespearean sources have been identified by experts across the centuries, Nostradamus-to our knowledge-was never mentioned by anyone.

Now, in the 21st century, we can decipher the clues left for us in paintings, suspicious death reports, poetry, plays, and 20th century analyses of 16th century documents. They are like a time capsule intended to be discovered at a later time.
    We can find many Freemason and Rosicrucian clues in the 1603 portrait of Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated “Venus and Adonis” in 1593.  It is called the “Tower Portrait” for its setting in the Tower Prison, from which Southampton had just emerged after serving a sentence for supporting the Essex Rebellion. Why was he eager to inform future generations that he was both a Rosicrucian and a Freemason? Is our present generation those “eyes not yet created” that Shakespeare predicted (in Sonnet 81) would make the “Fair Youth” immortal? 
    Was the Earl of Southampton Shakespeare’s patron, or was he the “Fair Youth” -- the natural son the poet could not acknowledge?  Shakespeare’s poems and plays show that he was a Freemason and a Rosicrucian. Yet there is a problem when we try to apply this knowledge to the Stratford resident, who had no connections to the secret societies. Research of the past century has identified the most probable user of the pen name “Shakespeare” as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.  Oxford had an affair with Elizabeth in 1572-73, leading to gossip that they had a child being raised as the Third Earl of Southampton. To protect Elizabeth’s political persona of “Virgin Queen,” Oxford used pen names. His enemies tried to destroy all his manuscripts, and they quickly suppressed the 1609 edition of the Sonnets. But Freemasons and Rosicrucian friends hid the documents and preserved them until after the would-be censors were dead.
      The love Oxford felt for Elizabeth and his son are presented dramatically in the movie Anonymous directed by Roland Emmerich, and in Helen Heightsman Gordon’s The Secret Love Story in Shakespeare’s Sonnets [2008]. Though fictional, Emmerich’s movie was based on ten years of solid research. Gordon’s literary criticism interprets the sonnets as they relate to the life experiences of Edward de Vere, based on 20 years of research on Shakespeare’s authorship.
      Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to refute other theories of Shakespearean authorship, a brief explanatory note follows the conclusion.