Delia Bacon
Encyclopedia
Delia Bacon was an American
writer of plays and short stories, a sister of the Congregational
minister Leonard Bacon
. She is best known today for her work on the Shakespeare authorship question
.
She promoted the theory that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare
were written by a group of men, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh
and others, which may have included Edmund Spenser
, Lord Buckhurst
and the Earl of Oxford
.
in Tallmadge
, Ohio, the youngest daughter of a Congregationalist
minister, who in pursuit of a vision had abandoned New Haven for the wilds of Ohio. The venture quickly collapsed, and the family returned to New England
, where her father died soon after. The impoverished state of their finances permitted only her elder brother Leonard to receive a tertiary education, at Yale
, while her own formal education ended when she was fourteen. She became a teacher in schools in Connecticut
, New Jersey
, and New York
, and then, until about 1852, became a distinguished professional lecturer, conducting, in various Eastern United States
cities, classes for women in history and literature by methods she devised. At 20, in 1831, she published her first book, Tales of the Puritans anonymously, consisting of three long stories on colonial life. In 1832 she beat Edgar Allan Poe
for a short-story prize sponsored by the Philadelphia Saturday Courier.
In 1836 she moved to New York, and became an avid theatre-goer. She met the leading Shakespearean actress Ellen Tree soon after, and persuaded her to take the lead role in a play she was writing, partly in blank verse
, entitled The Bride of Fort Edward, based on her award-winning story, Love's Martyr, about Jane M'Crea, which she also published anonymously in 1839. The work was reviewed favourably again by Edgar Allan Poe, but proved to be a commercial flop.
Delia Bacon withdrew from public life and lecturing in early 1845, and began to research intensively a theory she was developing over the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which she mapped out by October of that year. However a decade was to pass before her book The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded (1857) was to see print. During these years she was befriended by Nathaniel Hawthorne
, and Ralph Waldo Emerson
, and, after securing sponsorship to travel for research to England, in May 1853, met with Thomas Carlyle
, who though intrigued, shrieked loudly as he heard her exposition.
This was the heyday of Higher criticism, which was uncovering the multiple authorship
of the Bible
, and positing the composite nature of masterpieces like those attributed to Homer
. It was also a period of rising bardolatry
, the deification of Shakespeare's genius, and a widespread, almost hyperbolic veneration for the philosophical genius of Francis Bacon
. Bacon was influenced by these currents. Bacon, like many of her time, approached Shakespearean drama as philosophical masterpieces written for a closed aristocratic society of courtiers and monarchs, and found it difficult to believe they were written either with commercial intent or for a popular audience. Puzzled by the gap between the bare facts of William Shakespeare
's life and his vast literary output, she intended to prove that the plays attributed to Shakespeare were written by a coterie of men, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh
and Edmund Spenser
, for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system, for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. This system she set out to discover beneath the superficial text of the plays. From her friendship with Samuel Morse, an authority on codes, and encryption
for the telegraph, she learnt of Bacon's interest in secret ciphers, and this prompted her own approach to the authorship question.
James Shapiro
interprets her theory both in terms of the cultural tensions of her historical milieu, and as consequential on an intellectual and emotional crisis that unfolded as she both broke with her Puritan upbringing and developed a deep confidential relationship with a fellow lodger, Alexander MacWhorter, a young theology graduate from Yale, which was subsequently interrupted by her brother. MacWhorter was absolved of culpability in a subsequent ecclesiastical trial, whose verdict led to a rift between Delia and her fellow congregationalists.
Her theory proposed that the missing fourth part of Bacon's unfinished magnum opus
, the Instauratio Magna had in fact survived in the form of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. Why Francis Bacon should write under such a guise is not clear, but Delia Bacon argued that the great plays were the collective effort of a:
The cenacle opposing the 'despotism
' of Queen Elizabeth and King James, like the knights of King Arthur
's Round Table
consisted of Francis Bacon, Walter Ralegh, perhaps Edmund Spenser
, Lord Buckhurst
and the Earl of Oxford
, all putatively employing playwriting to speak to both rulers and the ruled as committed republican
s vindicating that cause against tyranny. She had, in Shapiro's reading, a 'revolutionary agenda' that consisted in upturning the myths of America's founding fathers and the Puritan heritage.
Bacon's skeptical attitude towards the orthodox view of Shakespearean authorship earned her the enduring contempt of many, such as Richard Grant White
, but also the professed admiration of many of the greatest literary minds of her generation. Emerson assisted her in publishing her first essay on the Shakespearean question in the January 1856 issue of Putnam’s:
Emerson, who greatly admired Bacon, and who was sceptical of her claim originally, wrote that she would need 'enchanted instruments, nay alchemy itself, to melt into one identity these two reputations', and retrospectively remarked that America had only two "producers" during the 1850s, "Our wild Whitman, with real inspiration but checked by [a] titanic abdomen; and Delia Bacon, with genius, but mad and clinging like a tortoise to English soil." Though he was intrigued by her insights into the plays, he grew sceptical of the 'magical cipher' of which Bacon wrote without ever producing evidence for it.
According to Whitman
, himself among the most outspoken of 19th century anti-Stratfordians, she was "the sweetest, eloquentist, grandest woman…that America has so far produced….and, of course, very unworldly, just in all ways such a woman as was calculated to bring the whole literary pack down on her, the orthodox, cruel, stately, dainty, over-fed literary pack – worshipping tradition, unconscious of this day’s honest sunlight."
madwoman, one recent reassessment challenges this, restoring the favorable view of Bacon held by Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whitman:
James Shapiro
argues that her political reading of the plays, and her insistence on collaborative authorship, anticipated modern approaches by a century and a half.
There is a biography by her nephew, Theodore Bacon, Delia Bacon: A Sketch (Boston, 1888), and an appreciative chapter, "Recollections of a Gifted Woman," in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Our Old Home (Boston, 1863). She died in Hartford
, Connecticut.
She is interred in Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven
, Connecticut.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer of plays and short stories, a sister of the Congregational
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
minister Leonard Bacon
Leonard Bacon
Leonard Bacon was an American Congregational preacher and writer.-Biography:Leonard Bacon was born in Detroit, Michigan...
. She is best known today for her work on the Shakespeare authorship question
Shakespeare authorship question
Image:ShakespeareCandidates1.jpg|thumb|alt=Portraits of Shakespeare and four proposed alternative authors.|Oxford, Bacon, Derby, and Marlowe have each been proposed as the true author...
.
She promoted the theory that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
were written by a group of men, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
and others, which may have included Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, Lord Buckhurst
Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset
Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset was an English statesman, poet, dramatist and Freemason. He was the son of Richard Sackville, a cousin to Anne Boleyn. He was a Member of Parliament and Lord High Treasurer.-Biography:...
and the Earl of Oxford
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was an Elizabethan courtier, playwright, lyric poet, sportsman and patron of the arts, and is currently the most popular alternative candidate proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's works....
.
Biography
Bacon was born in a frontier log-cabinLog cabin
A log cabin is a house built from logs. It is a fairly simple type of log house. A distinction should be drawn between the traditional meanings of "log cabin" and "log house." Historically most "Log cabins" were a simple one- or 1½-story structures, somewhat impermanent, and less finished or less...
in Tallmadge
Tallmadge, Ohio
As of the census of 2000, there were 16,390 people, 6,273 households, and 4,711 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,173.9 people per square mile . There were 6,494 housing units at an average density of 465.1 per square mile...
, Ohio, the youngest daughter of a Congregationalist
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
minister, who in pursuit of a vision had abandoned New Haven for the wilds of Ohio. The venture quickly collapsed, and the family returned to New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, where her father died soon after. The impoverished state of their finances permitted only her elder brother Leonard to receive a tertiary education, at Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, while her own formal education ended when she was fourteen. She became a teacher in schools in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and then, until about 1852, became a distinguished professional lecturer, conducting, in various Eastern United States
Eastern United States
The Eastern United States, the American East, or simply the East is traditionally defined as the states east of the Mississippi River. The first two tiers of states west of the Mississippi have traditionally been considered part of the West, but can be included in the East today; usually in...
cities, classes for women in history and literature by methods she devised. At 20, in 1831, she published her first book, Tales of the Puritans anonymously, consisting of three long stories on colonial life. In 1832 she beat Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
for a short-story prize sponsored by the Philadelphia Saturday Courier.
In 1836 she moved to New York, and became an avid theatre-goer. She met the leading Shakespearean actress Ellen Tree soon after, and persuaded her to take the lead role in a play she was writing, partly in blank verse
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
, entitled The Bride of Fort Edward, based on her award-winning story, Love's Martyr, about Jane M'Crea, which she also published anonymously in 1839. The work was reviewed favourably again by Edgar Allan Poe, but proved to be a commercial flop.
Delia Bacon withdrew from public life and lecturing in early 1845, and began to research intensively a theory she was developing over the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which she mapped out by October of that year. However a decade was to pass before her book The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded (1857) was to see print. During these years she was befriended by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
, and Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, and, after securing sponsorship to travel for research to England, in May 1853, met with Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
, who though intrigued, shrieked loudly as he heard her exposition.
This was the heyday of Higher criticism, which was uncovering the multiple authorship
Documentary hypothesis
The documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, and positing the composite nature of masterpieces like those attributed to Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
. It was also a period of rising bardolatry
Bardolatry
Bardolatry is a term that refers to the excessive adulation of William Shakespeare, a portmanteau of "bard" and "idolatry." Shakespeare has been known as "the Bard" since the nineteenth century. One who idolizes Shakespeare is known as a Bardolater....
, the deification of Shakespeare's genius, and a widespread, almost hyperbolic veneration for the philosophical genius of Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
. Bacon was influenced by these currents. Bacon, like many of her time, approached Shakespearean drama as philosophical masterpieces written for a closed aristocratic society of courtiers and monarchs, and found it difficult to believe they were written either with commercial intent or for a popular audience. Puzzled by the gap between the bare facts of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's life and his vast literary output, she intended to prove that the plays attributed to Shakespeare were written by a coterie of men, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
and Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system, for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. This system she set out to discover beneath the superficial text of the plays. From her friendship with Samuel Morse, an authority on codes, and encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
for the telegraph, she learnt of Bacon's interest in secret ciphers, and this prompted her own approach to the authorship question.
James Shapiro
James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specialises in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period...
interprets her theory both in terms of the cultural tensions of her historical milieu, and as consequential on an intellectual and emotional crisis that unfolded as she both broke with her Puritan upbringing and developed a deep confidential relationship with a fellow lodger, Alexander MacWhorter, a young theology graduate from Yale, which was subsequently interrupted by her brother. MacWhorter was absolved of culpability in a subsequent ecclesiastical trial, whose verdict led to a rift between Delia and her fellow congregationalists.
Her theory proposed that the missing fourth part of Bacon's unfinished magnum opus
Magnum opus
Magnum opus , from the Latin meaning "great work", refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of a writer, artist, or composer.-Related terms:Sometimes the term magnum opus is used to refer to simply "a great work" rather than "the...
, the Instauratio Magna had in fact survived in the form of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. Why Francis Bacon should write under such a guise is not clear, but Delia Bacon argued that the great plays were the collective effort of a:
little clique of disappointed and defeated politicians who undertook to head and organize popular opposition against the government, and were compelled to retreat from that enterprise.. .Driven from one field, they showed themselves in another. Driven from the open field, they fought in secret.
The cenacle opposing the 'despotism
Despotism
Despotism is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute power. That entity may be an individual, as in an autocracy, or it may be a group, as in an oligarchy...
' of Queen Elizabeth and King James, like the knights of King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
's Round Table
Round Table
The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of...
consisted of Francis Bacon, Walter Ralegh, perhaps Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, Lord Buckhurst
Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset
Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset was an English statesman, poet, dramatist and Freemason. He was the son of Richard Sackville, a cousin to Anne Boleyn. He was a Member of Parliament and Lord High Treasurer.-Biography:...
and the Earl of Oxford
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was an Elizabethan courtier, playwright, lyric poet, sportsman and patron of the arts, and is currently the most popular alternative candidate proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's works....
, all putatively employing playwriting to speak to both rulers and the ruled as committed republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
s vindicating that cause against tyranny. She had, in Shapiro's reading, a 'revolutionary agenda' that consisted in upturning the myths of America's founding fathers and the Puritan heritage.
Bacon's skeptical attitude towards the orthodox view of Shakespearean authorship earned her the enduring contempt of many, such as Richard Grant White
Richard Grant White
Richard Grant White was one of the foremost literary and musical critics of his day. He was also a prominent Shakespearen scholar, journalist, social critic, and lawyer who was born and died in New York USA.-Biography:...
, but also the professed admiration of many of the greatest literary minds of her generation. Emerson assisted her in publishing her first essay on the Shakespearean question in the January 1856 issue of Putnam’s:
How can we undertake to account for the literary miracles of antiquity, while this great myth of the modern ages still lies at our own door, unquestioned? This vast, magical, unexplained phenomenon which our own times have proceed under our own eyes, appears to be, indeed, the only thing which our modern rationalism is not to be permitted to meddle with. For, here the critics themselves still veil their faces, filling the air with mystic utterances which seem to say, that to this shrine at least, for the footstep of the common reason and the common sense, there is yet no admittance.
Emerson, who greatly admired Bacon, and who was sceptical of her claim originally, wrote that she would need 'enchanted instruments, nay alchemy itself, to melt into one identity these two reputations', and retrospectively remarked that America had only two "producers" during the 1850s, "Our wild Whitman, with real inspiration but checked by [a] titanic abdomen; and Delia Bacon, with genius, but mad and clinging like a tortoise to English soil." Though he was intrigued by her insights into the plays, he grew sceptical of the 'magical cipher' of which Bacon wrote without ever producing evidence for it.
According to Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, himself among the most outspoken of 19th century anti-Stratfordians, she was "the sweetest, eloquentist, grandest woman…that America has so far produced….and, of course, very unworldly, just in all ways such a woman as was calculated to bring the whole literary pack down on her, the orthodox, cruel, stately, dainty, over-fed literary pack – worshipping tradition, unconscious of this day’s honest sunlight."
Bacon's legacy
Although Delia Bacon is still regarded by many literary scholars as a quintessential Hester PrynneHester Prynne
Hester Prynne, the young protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, is a woman condemned by her Puritan neighbors. The character has been called "among the first and most important female protagonists in American literature."...
madwoman, one recent reassessment challenges this, restoring the favorable view of Bacon held by Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whitman:
For too long critics have depicted [her] as a tragicomic figure, blindly pursuing a fantastic mission in obscurity and isolation, only to end in silence and madness….this is not to say that the stereotype is without basis. On the contrary, her sad story established an archetype for the story of the Shakespeare authorship at large – or at least one element of it: an otherworldly pursuit of truth that produces gifts for a world that is indifferent or hostile to them.
James Shapiro
James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specialises in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period...
argues that her political reading of the plays, and her insistence on collaborative authorship, anticipated modern approaches by a century and a half.
Had she limited her argument to these points instead of conjoining it to an argument about how Shakespeare couldn't have written them, there is little doubt that, instead of being dismissed as a crank and a madwoman, she would be hailed today as the precursor of the New HistoricistsNew HistoricismNew Historicism is a school of literary theory, grounded in critical theory, that developed in the 1980s, primarily through the work of the critic Stephen Greenblatt, and gained widespread influence in the 1990s....
, and the first to argue that the plays anticipated the political upheavals England experienced in the mid-seventeenth century. But Delia Bacon couldn't stop at that point. Nor could she concede that the republican ideas she located in the plays circulated widely at the time and were as available to William Shakespeare as they were to Walter Ralegh or Francis Bacon.
There is a biography by her nephew, Theodore Bacon, Delia Bacon: A Sketch (Boston, 1888), and an appreciative chapter, "Recollections of a Gifted Woman," in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Our Old Home (Boston, 1863). She died in Hartford
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...
, Connecticut.
She is interred in Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, Connecticut.
External links
- Delia Bacon at Find-A-Grave