The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded — Background and Themes

The Proposition and Its Framing

The first section of the work, 'The Proposition,' lays out Bacon's core thesis: that the plays attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by Francis Bacon and a circle of Elizabethan intellectuals as a vehicle for transmitting forbidden political and scientific knowledge. She argues that the Elizabethan era required 'particular methods of tradition'—a coded delivery system—because open publication of certain ideas would have been dangerous. The book's table of contents reveals an ambitious architecture: after the proposition, it moves through the age of Elizabeth, the life of Raleigh, and what Bacon calls 'Raleigh's School' or 'The New Academy.' This framing suggests she sees the plays as part of a coordinated intellectual project, not isolated works of drama.

Lear's Philosopher as a Case Study

The excerpted analysis of King Lear demonstrates Bacon's method in practice. She focuses on the character of Poor Tom (Edgar disguised as a mad beggar), whom Lear calls a 'learned Theban.' Bacon reads this scene as a deliberate philosophical allegory: the king's encounter with 'unaccommodated man' represents the confrontation between political power and raw human need. She notes the 'rough aristocratic contempt' of the king's party toward Tom, contrasted with their 'boundless sympathy' for Lear himself, arguing that the poet uses this contrast to expose class hypocrisy. The passage is dense with cross-references: she links Tom's study—'How to prevent the fiend and to kill vermin'—to a line from another play about 'a nobler kind of vermin,' and to contemporary philosopher Macaulay's narrow definition of philosophy.

Recurring Images and Structural Patterns

Throughout the excerpt, Bacon returns to a set of recurring images: the 'Bedlamite,' the 'king and the beggar,' and the idea of philosophy as a practical art. She describes Lear's madness as an 'exquisite physiological exhibition' and emphasizes the 'confounding of proximate conceptions' that leads the king to see Tom as a source of wisdom. The movement between scenes is equally important: Bacon traces how the play shifts from palace to heath, from regal authority to naked humanity, and from abstract pity to the specific problem of 'preventing the fiend.' She treats these structural shifts as deliberate rhetorical choices, arguing that the play's organization mirrors the 'double method' of illustration and concealment she attributes to Baconian science.

The Limits of the Evidence

Because the excerpts are incomplete—the text breaks off mid-sentence and the first book on 'The Historical Key' was reserved for separate publication—Bacon's full argument remains partially obscured. The available passages show a writer deeply engaged with close reading, but one who frequently leaps from textual detail to sweeping biographical claims. For instance, her assertion that the poet 'aiming at broader relationships, finds the mantle of his humanity wide enough for them, both' is grounded in the Lear scene, but her conclusion that this proves Baconian authorship relies on assumptions about Elizabethan secret societies that the excerpts do not fully substantiate. Readers should approach the work as a historical artifact of the Shakespeare authorship controversy rather than a definitive literary analysis.

Delia Bacon's book rewards attention for its intricate close readings and its bold structural claims about the plays, even if its central thesis remains unproven. Readers interested in the history of Shakespeare criticism will find here a passionate, idiosyncratic work that anticipates later theories of hidden meanings in literature. Approach it as a document of its time—a product of the 1850s fascination with codes, conspiracies, and the idea that great art must contain secret knowledge.

I came back to Delia Bacon’s strange idea that Shakespeare buried a quiet, older wisdom beneath his lines, and found myself recalling a different shelf entirely. There is something in her insistence on hidden layers that echoed the patient tracing of thought in The History of Philosophy in Islam — Reading Notes—less about doctrines than about how ideas travel, uneasily, from one mind to another. A soft, common thread.