Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare
A New Attribution Method
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Book Description
Francis Bacon's Contribution to Shakespeare advocates a paradigm shift away from a single-author theory of the Shakespeare work towards a many-hands theory. Here, the middle ground is adopted between competing so-called Stratfordian and alternative single-author conspiracy theories. In the process, arguments are advanced as to why Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623) presents as an unreliable document for attribution, and why contemporary opinion characterised Shakspere [his baptised name] as an opportunist businessman who acquired the work of others. Current methods of authorship attribution are critiqued, and an entirely new Rare Collocation Profiling (RCP) method is introduced which, unlike current stylometric methods, is capable of detecting multiple contributors to a text. Using the Early English Books Online database, rare phrases and collocations in a target text are identified together with the authors who used them. This allows a DNA-type profile to be constructed for the possible contributors to a text that also takes into account direction of influence. The method brings powerful new evidence to bear on crucial questions such as the author of the Groats-worth of Witte (1592) letter, the identifiable hands in 3 Henry VI, the extent of Francis Bacon’s contribution to Twelfth Night and The Tempest, and the scheduling of Love’s Labour’s Lost at the 1594–5 Gray’s Inn Christmas revels for which Bacon wrote entertainments. The treatise also provides detailed analyses of the nature of the complaint against Shakspere in the Groats-worth letter, the identity of the players who performed The Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn in 1594, and the reasons why Shakspere could not have had access to Virginia colony information that appears in The Tempest. With a Foreword by Sir Mark Rylance, this meticulously researched and penetrating study is a thought-provoking read for the inquisitive student in Shakespeare Studies.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1
A new method of attribution
1.2
Overview of the work
PART 1: SHAKSPERE AND BACON
Chapter 2
A Shakspere biography
2.1
Birthdate
2.2
Education
2.3
Literacy
2.4
Access to source material
2.5
Marriage
2.6
Shakspere the businessman
2.7
The Ben Jonson model
2.8
Shakspere the actor
2.9
Shakspere’s exit
Chapter 3
Contemporary opinion
3.1
Shakspere the dramatist
3.2
The ‘War of the Theatres’
3.3
The Parnassus plays
3.4
Ben Jonson’s view
Chapter 4
A fraudulent First Folio
4.1
Misattributions to Shakspere
4.2
William Jaggard’s integrity
4.3
The First Folio
4.4
RCP results
Chapter 5
Bacon’s dramatic entrance
5.1
Contemporary opinion of Bacon
5.2
Early years
5.3
Debt, drama, and design
5.4
The fall of Essex
5.5
Bacon’s rise to high office
5.6
Bacon’s fall to low office
Chapter 6
A charge of brokerage
6.1
The Groats-worth letter
6.2
The letter’s meaning
6.3
Groats-worth and Vertues Common-wealth
6.4
Chettle, Greene, or Nashe?
6.5
The Malone–Alexander debate
6.6
RCP of the Octavo and Folio 3 Henry VI
6.7
The verdict
Chapter 7
Bacon’s Vertues?
7.1
History of Vertues Common-wealth
7.2
Content of Vertues Common-wealth
7.3
Apophthegmes: Crosse–Bacon
7.4
Rare phrases: Crosse–Bacon–Shakespeare
7.5
Further research
PART 2: BACON’S INFLUENCE ON SELECTED PLAYS
Chapter 8
The Comedy of Errors
8.1
The 1594–5 Gray’s Inn revels
8.2
Gray’s Inn connections
8.3
The identity of the players
8.4
RCP analysis of The Comedy of Errors
Chapter 9
Love’s Labour’s Lost
9.1
The Gesta Grayorum
9.2
Love’s Labour’s Lost
9.3
Parallels between GG and LLL
9.4
A play designed around the revels
Chapter 10
Twelfth Night
10.1
Dating Twelfth Night’s topical allusions
10.2
Twelfth Night and the Middle Temple
10.3
Middle Temple characters
10.4
Misrule at the Middle Temple
10.5
The acting company
10.6
A Middle Temple play
10.7
An RCP analysis of Twelfth Night
Chapter 11
The Tempest
11.1
The Virginia colony
11.2
The ‘True Reportory’ and The Tempest
11.3
Shakspere’s inaccess to the ‘True Reportory’
11.4
The Tempest and Virginia Company literature
11.5
‘True Reportory’ and A true declaration
11.6
The Tempest as a political tool
11.7
Francis Bacon’s rare parallels with The Tempest
PART 3: ATTRIBUTION METHODS
Chapter 12
A history of authorship attribution
12.1
A body of text
12.2
External and internal evidence
12.3
Non-scientific practice
12.4
Biographical delusions
12.5
The introduction of counting methods
Chapter 13
Modern attribution methods
13.1
Critique of modern methods
13.2
The Zeta test
13.3
The Delta test
13.4
Phrases and collocations
Chapter 14
The new method of Rare Collocation Profiling
14.1
The EEBO search engine
14.2
The RCP method
14.3
Non-equalization of author corpora
14.4
The running track
14.5
A test case: A Funerall Elegye (1612)
14.6
Summary of RCP conclusions
Epilogue
Appendix A
RCP results for 3 Henry VI
Appendix B
RCP results for The Comedy of Errors
Appendix C
RCP results for Gesta Grayorum
Appendix D
RCP results for Love’s Labour’s Lost
Appendix E
RCP results for Twelfth Night
Appendix F
RCP results for The Tempest
Appendix G
Full RCP analysis of Pericles Act 1
BONUS ESSAYS: RESPONSE TO COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE
1.
Alleged Shakespeare Portrait
2.
A Country Controversy
Author(s)
Biography
Barry R. Clarke has a variety of interests. He has a Ph.D. in Shakespeare studies with peer-reviewed publications on The Tempest. His scholarly publications in quantum mechanics have led to an academic treatise The Quantum Puzzle: Critique of Quantum Theory and Electrodynamics (2017) which sets out a new theory of the mass vortex ring. There are also books on recreational mathematics for Cambridge University Press and Dover Publications, while Challenging Logic Puzzles Mensa (2003) is an amazon bestseller. He is presently puzzle compiler for The Daily Telegraph and Prospect magazine (UK). Viewers in the UK might have seen both his puzzle work and his comedy sketches broadcast on both the BBC and ITV.
Reviews
"Bacon throws a weird shadow over it all, although the detailing is very attractive, and the RCP tests are quite persuasive. [The Tempest chapter is] a perfect account of the story. I’m sure that Bacon was a lot closer to Shakespeare than most current accounts allow him to be."
- Professor Andrew Gurr, Editor, New Variorum Tempest
"I'm sympathetic to rare collocation profiling as a source of evidence for authorship."
- Professor Steven Pinker, Harvard University