Francis Bacon's Signatures - In the Shakespeare Plays #263221

The object with which the following pages are written is to endeavour to gain help in verifying and elucidating certain anagrams, and the records which seem to be afforded by their means, at the end of each of the Shakespeare plays in the folio of 1693. Learned men seem to be deterred from pursuing this investigation by a notion that the whole thing is vain and purposeless. They think it inconceivable that the Sage of Verulam, or his friends, should have wasted time and money in contriving and printing mere puzzles, con taining information known to those who had the key to such ciphers, and therefore, to the initiated, useless; but information, inscrutable to the uninitiated, and therefore to them also useless. Such arguments, though plausible, ignore the point upon which the whole question of ciphers turns. The very idea of secret writing includes, and draws after it, the idea of writers and readers, as well as printers of that secret writing. This idea involves a theory or belief in the existence of a secret society, and it will readily be believed that a great expense of time, money, and trouble would not have been incurred, excepting on behalf of a very large number of initiated readers, members of a fraternity bound to hand down the knowledge and traditions (perhaps verbally) received. This paper makes no attempt even to sketch the history and methods of that secret society of which we believe Francis Bacon to have been the centre and moving spirit, if not the true founder; but it may be said, in passing, that the same books and scraps of evidence which hint at these particulars — now and then lifting the curtain to give us a glimpse of the concealed man, the concealed poet, magician, or Proteus, whom we believe him to be — tell us, even more plainly, that the mystery should not endure for ever. There seems to be but little doubt that Francis Bacon planned and desired that the revelation should take place at the end of an age — 100 years; then the veil should be withdrawn, and from behind his curtain the great poet-philosopher should pace forth and be known as himself.