Bacon And Shakespeare

"Bacon and Shakespeare" by Albert Frederick Calvert. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Printer's copy for this published work (Cincinnati: Peter G. Thomson), consisting mainly of the author's autograph but with many printed slips pasted in. The printed book shows many small variations, probably the result of proof reading, but appears not to contain additional listings.

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.

Since this book is being published posthumous, please allow me to share what I remember about my dad, the author. Russell Storrs Hall was the third son born to Olive Agar Hall and Bertine Anderson Hall on February 4th,1917 on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. I believe he was a very serious, sensitive, studious young man growing up, who was constantly reading and searching for answers. He possessed a high intellect and a profound curiosity. He attended college in Chicago, but soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, enlisted in the Army. At some point in time, his Company was sent to serve in Panama, Central America, where he became ill from the effects of the jungle. He received a medical discharge in 1943 and returned home to convalesce. On August 5th, 1945 he married my mother, Hildegard H. Bergt. When I was young, my father worked as an insurance underwriter for George F. Brown Insurance and LLoyds of London. In 1960, after sitting for a civil service exam, he changed careers and became a Postal Carrier. My parents divorced in 1968, and dad later remarried in 1971 to Lorraine R. Lawler. In 1982 he retired from the downtown Chicago Post Offifi ce as supervisor. My father’s lifetime passion and hobby was researching for this manuscript, and he dedicated his retirement years to writing this book. His wife Lorraine was his source of encouragement. He fifi nally completed his book only a few months before his death, February 10th, 1998. I am very proud to be his daughter, yours truly, Janice Gold-Orland.