Once upon a time there was a lady called Delia Salter Bacon. She was born in a frontier cabin in the backwoods of Ohio in 1811 and was the daughter of a minister who had a vision. When the vision faded away the Bacon family returned to New England where some twenty years later she became a school teacher in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.
While she was living in New York Delia developed a love of the theatre and even persuaded the famous Shakespearean actress, Ellen Terry, to help her write her play, The Bride of Fort Edward. This play was based on the true story of Jane McCrea, a young bride who was killed by Indians in 1777 while on her way to meet her fiance. Even though the play was praised by Edgar Allan Poe it bombed commercially.
Modern reprint
In 1846 Delia fell in love with a minister called Alexander MacWhorter but her older brother, Leonard, forbade her to marry him. The minister was tried by the Church for "dishonourable conduct" and Delia was forced to leave New Haven for Ohio as a result of nasty public opinion. Despite this setback, six years later she became a distinguished English Literature lecturer and gave talks all over the eastern USA.
It was during this period that she began to question who really wrote Shakespeare, i.e. she became seriously involved in the Shakespeare Authorship Question, (a topic that has been dealt with on this site a few entries ago). She also became friendly with Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
As her involvement increased, so did her desire to sail to England and visit Stratford-upon-Avon to see if the Bard really existed and if he was indeed the author of the works in his name. Her basic theory was that the real author was Sir Francis Bacon (no family relationship), together with Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser. She found it impossible to believe that WS, that 'ignorant, low-bred, vulgar country fellow, who had never inhaled in his life one breath of that social atmosphere that fills his plays' was really responsible for the writing of Macbeth, King Lear and the rest of the Shakespeare canon.
She managed to raise enough money for her project and in 1853 sailed to England. She was to remain there for three years during which time she wrote her magnum opus, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded.Towards the end of her stay, while she was a sick woman, she went to visit WS's grave in Trinity Church, Stratford. There one night, armed with a shovel and a lantern, she planned to open his grave and hopefully find evidence that would confirm her theory. Perhaps the famous curse on the gravestone:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare
Blessed be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cursed be he yt moves my bones.
prevented her from carrying out her plan. As the dawn broke she left the grave untouched and returned to her lodgings.
Shakespeare's gravestone, complete with curse in Holy Trinity church,
Stratford-upon-Avon
She returned to the USA some time after, a very sick woman, and was hospitalised in an asylum. The book which she had written in England was published, but to her great disappointment did not sell well at all. She died in 1857 believing that she was no longer Delia Bacon but 'the Holy Ghost and surrounded by devils.'
Modern reprint
Her obsession that Sir Francis Bacon (and others) had written Shakespeare did not die with her. The English Bacon Society was established in 1885 and an American one in 1892.
For comments, please write to: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com
While she was living in New York Delia developed a love of the theatre and even persuaded the famous Shakespearean actress, Ellen Terry, to help her write her play, The Bride of Fort Edward. This play was based on the true story of Jane McCrea, a young bride who was killed by Indians in 1777 while on her way to meet her fiance. Even though the play was praised by Edgar Allan Poe it bombed commercially.
In 1846 Delia fell in love with a minister called Alexander MacWhorter but her older brother, Leonard, forbade her to marry him. The minister was tried by the Church for "dishonourable conduct" and Delia was forced to leave New Haven for Ohio as a result of nasty public opinion. Despite this setback, six years later she became a distinguished English Literature lecturer and gave talks all over the eastern USA.
It was during this period that she began to question who really wrote Shakespeare, i.e. she became seriously involved in the Shakespeare Authorship Question, (a topic that has been dealt with on this site a few entries ago). She also became friendly with Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
As her involvement increased, so did her desire to sail to England and visit Stratford-upon-Avon to see if the Bard really existed and if he was indeed the author of the works in his name. Her basic theory was that the real author was Sir Francis Bacon (no family relationship), together with Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser. She found it impossible to believe that WS, that 'ignorant, low-bred, vulgar country fellow, who had never inhaled in his life one breath of that social atmosphere that fills his plays' was really responsible for the writing of Macbeth, King Lear and the rest of the Shakespeare canon.
She managed to raise enough money for her project and in 1853 sailed to England. She was to remain there for three years during which time she wrote her magnum opus, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded.Towards the end of her stay, while she was a sick woman, she went to visit WS's grave in Trinity Church, Stratford. There one night, armed with a shovel and a lantern, she planned to open his grave and hopefully find evidence that would confirm her theory. Perhaps the famous curse on the gravestone:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare
Blessed be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cursed be he yt moves my bones.
prevented her from carrying out her plan. As the dawn broke she left the grave untouched and returned to her lodgings.
Stratford-upon-Avon
She returned to the USA some time after, a very sick woman, and was hospitalised in an asylum. The book which she had written in England was published, but to her great disappointment did not sell well at all. She died in 1857 believing that she was no longer Delia Bacon but 'the Holy Ghost and surrounded by devils.'
Her obsession that Sir Francis Bacon (and others) had written Shakespeare did not die with her. The English Bacon Society was established in 1885 and an American one in 1892.
For comments, please write to: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com
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