The Misfortunes of Arthur

[A Phoenix]

THE LITTLE KNOWN AND READ PLAYTHE MISFORTUNES OF ARTHUR (MARKING THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF BACON'S NAME IN PRINT) HIS FIRST UNACKNOWLEDGED SHAKESPEARE PLAY WHICH IS REPEATEDLY ECHOED THROUGHOUT THE SHAKESPEARE CANON.

For four hundred years The Misfortunes of Arthur has been surrounded by silence and suppression. This relatively unknown historically important drama marks the first appearance of the name of the great poet-philosopher and dramatist Francis Bacon in print and is by definition unique in the canon of his acknowledged writings and marks a unique biographical and bibliographical milestone in the literary career of this great historical figure and man of letters. The important landmark drama written, performed and published in 1587-8 immediately pre-dates the Shakespearean era and is of untold importance in the history of his authorship of the Shakespeare plays. The Misfortunes of Arthur serves as a source for at least half-a-dozen of his Shakespeare plays and has moroever important and extensive links to more than half the Shakespeare canon. It is permeated with his Baconian-Shakespearean DNA whose salient themes repeatedly anticipates and finds echo throughout the whole Shakespeare canon from the first to the last.

[Allisnum2er]

Hi A Phoenix,

I just had a quick look at "The Misfortunes of Arthur" and I noticed something worth looking.

https://archive.org/details/misfortunesofart00hughuoft/page/14/mode/2up?view=theater&q=bacon

The upper letter V of Vther, on the first line, form with the letters T and A the Hebrew word TAV meaning "mark" or "seal".

TAV is also the LAST letter of the Hebrew alphabet and a refererence to the CROSS.

Aleph -Tav is the same as Alpha and Omega , the Beginning and the End.

I took it as an invitation to take a closer look at the Beginning and at the End of the book, and here is what I found.

THE BEGINNING ...

Notice the italic letter h in "came upon the stage" that looks like a letter b.

And in the alignment of "bacon" we have the "gar" of "garments".

GAR/GOR is a synonym of SPEARE.

THE END ...

WAG is a synonyme of SHAKE and GOR is a synonyme of SPEARE.

Could it be a subterfuge used by  F.B.( Frauncis Bacon) to conceal that he was WILL SHAKE-SPEARE (WAG-GOR) ?

Right at the end we can see 3 dots and an emblem with 3 parts.

33 is the simple cipher of BACON.

[A Phoenix]

Good Morning, High Wizard of B'Hive, as per usual you are the first in history to identify and explain all these cryptic allusions hidden in plain sight. Brilliant. Great to have you back.♥️👍🙂

Edited August 6, 2022 by A Phoenix

[A Phoenix]

THE LITTLE KNOWN AND READ PLAY THE MISFORTUNES OF ARTHUR (MARKING THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF BACON'S NAME IN PRINT) HIS FIRST UNACKNOWLEDGED SHAKESPEARE PLAY WHICH IS REPEATEDLY ECHOED THROUGHOUT THE SHAKESPEARE CANON.

For four hundred years The Misfortunes of Arthur has been surrounded by silence and suppression. This relatively unknown historically important drama marks the first appearance of the name of the great poet-philosopher and dramatist Francis Bacon in print and is by definition unique in the canon of his acknowledged writings and marks a unique biographical and bibliographical milestone in the literary career of this great historical figure and man of letters. The important landmark drama written, performed and published in 1587-8 immediately pre-dates the Shakespearean era and is of untold importance in the history of his authorship of the Shakespeare plays. The Misfortunes of Arthur serves as a source for at least half-a-dozen of his Shakespeare plays and has moreover important and extensive links to more than half the Shakespeare canon. It is permeated with his Baconian-Shakespearean DNA whose salient themes repeatedly anticipates and finds echo throughout the whole Shakespeare canon from the first to the last.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

 

[A Phoenix]

Undeniable Links to Shakespeare

In normal circumstances any drama with any kind of proximity to the Shakespeare plays however remote or tenuous would in normal circumstances attract the attention of biographers, editors and commentators in their battalions, who would individually and collectively scrutinize it for all traces, echoes, parallels, mutual links, and any and all connections to the hallowed Shakespeare canon.

One suspects the principal reason why this play is suppressed or passed over by the standard Shakespeare source works is because the name of Francis Bacon is linked to its authorship and production, an historically important play, which pre-dates and has undeniable links to a large number of Shakespeare plays. The untold importance of Bacon’s connection to The Misfortunes of Arthur makes it unique in the history of the authorship of the Shakespeare canon and it is the reason why the play has languished in the forgotten hinterlands of orthodox scholarship for the last four centuries.

The silence and systematic suppression is all the more telling when we consider after ‘William Shakespeare’ Bacon is the most scrutinized writer in English history. Surely, there is no need to state to any literary student that the first appearance of the name of an author in print is a biographical and bibliographical milestone in the canon of any great historical figure or man of letters. Thus one may reasonably expect that Bacon’s biographers and editors would have devoted an enormous amount of energy and space to the minute scrutiny of the first work to which his name is attached in print.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Dr Rawley

There is no mention of the play by his first editor and biographer Dr Rawley (who lived with Bacon for the last ten years of his recorded life from 1616 to 1626) in the first English biography of his Rosicrucian Master, nor in any of the other editions, or collected editions by Dr Rawley of Bacon’s Works.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Archbishop Tenison

On the death of Dr Rawley many of Bacon’s letters and manuscripts passed to his second editor Thomas Tenison (afterwards Archbishop of Cantebury), who published some but certainly not all of them in Baconiana. Like his predecessor Dr Rawley our second Bacon editor Archbishop Tenison makes no reference to the work marking his first appearance in print.    

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

David Mallet Biography

A new one hundred and ninety-seven page biography of Bacon entitled The Life Of Francis Bacon by the Scottish poet and dramatist David Mallet appeared in 1740. At the end of this new Life its author Mallet provided a thirty page

Catalogue Of All My Lord Bacon’s Writings, As they are printed in the Edition of 1740.

[David Mallet, The Life Of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England (London: printed for A Millar, 1740), pp. 167-97]

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

No Mention of Arthur

By this he meant his own four volume edition of The Works Of Francis Bacon...with Several Additional Pieces, Never Before printed in any Edition of his Works also published in 1740 The four volume edition contains more than thirty of Bacon’s major and minor works, as well as many of his occasional writings, letters and speeches, but its Bacon editor and biographer does not refer once to Bacon’s first appearance in print in The Misfortunes of Arthur.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

18th Century Accounts

His Life of Bacon furnished the later eighteenth century editions of Bacon’s Works and informed other eighteenth century biographical accounts of Bacon, none of which mention is first appearance in print.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

James Spedding

In contrast to the silence of his forebears in the fourteen-volume The Letters and Life and Works of Francis Bacon his great standard editor and biographer James Spedding adopted a method of delivery his subject would have greatly admired. Instead of the previous crude but effective method of silence and suppression by his earlier editors and biographers Spedding in that masterful way of his actually refers to the invisible play in passing but deftly without even mentioning its title (nor is there any trace of it in the index) with such understatement and brevity that one can only stand back in quiet admiration and applaud:

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

The Masque

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

J.M.Robertson

The first twentieth century single edition (a collection based upon Spedding’s seven volume edition) The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon edited by J. M. Robertson published in 1905 also makes no mention of The Misfortunes of Arthur, nor so in his bloated and tedious The Baconian Heresy a work marred by selective suppression and gross misrepresentation of the facts and the evidence.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Professor Vickers

The first extensive one-volume anthology of Bacon’s writings since Robertson by the modern Bacon authority Professor Brian Vickers is of much more interest. Under the title Francis Bacon: A Critical Edition of the Major Works it was first issued by Oxford University Press in 1996.The edition includes several of Bacon’s major works The Advancement of Learning, the Essays, the utopian Rosicrucian New Atlantis, and reprints sixteen other works which were not otherwise readily available. One of the important and valuable features of this inexpensive and accessible work is it reprints a series of dramatic devices and entertainments written by Bacon that Professor Vickers rightly points out ‘are little known outside the pages of Spedding’s seven-volume edition of The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon’. 

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Dramatic Devices

The dramatic devices were written shortly after The Misfortunes of Arthur beginning from the early 1590s: Of Tribute; or, giving which is due (c.1591-2), six speeches for A Device for the Gray’s Inn Revels (1594-5), which saw the first performance The Comedy of Errors, and Of Love and Self-Love (1595), all of which were originally part of Bacon’s collection of manuscripts known as The Northumberland MSS which originally held copies of his Shakespeare plays Richard II and Richard III.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Professor Vickers

In addition to printing these texts Professor Vickers provides his readers with very extensive annotations explaining their background and context. One would have thought considering the detailed attention he devotes to these Bacon dramatic devices and entertainments he might have assigned a similar proportionate amount of energy to the Baconian drama immediately preceding them, the one which witnessed Bacon’s first appearance in print. However, all that Vickers had to say about The Misfortunes of Arthur is inappropriately relegated to a footnote in his introduction which I here quote in full:

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Jardine & Stewart

In the recent modern biography of Lord Bacon by professors Alan Stewart and Lisa Jardine, a work described on its jacket as ‘the definitive life of one of the great figures of English history’ its index lists more than forty of Bacon’s writings referred to and discussed in their detailed text. One work however is conspicuous by its absence: the work to which Bacon’s name first appears in print The Misfortunes of Arthur.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[A Phoenix]

Professor Ellis

The same can be said about the most recent-full length biography by Professor Robert P. Ellis entitled Francis Bacon The Double-Edged Life of the Philosopher and Statesman published in 2015. He to refers to and discusses a whole range of Bacon’s writings but can find no room for mention of The Misfortunes of Arthur.

Paper: https://www.academia.edu/45006687/Francis_Bacon_and_his_First_Unacknowledged_Shakespeare_Play_The_Misfortunes_of_Arthur_and_its_Extensive_Links_to_his_other_Shakespeare_Works

Video: https://youtu.be/OvUjs6MVvtY

[Light-of-Truth]

 

 

 

Curious I find two page 32's in this 1912 facsimile copy. Here is the first one:

https://archive.org/details/misfortunesofart00hughuoft/page/76/mode/1up?view=theater

Two blank page later the second page 32:

https://archive.org/details/misfortunesofart00hughuoft/page/79/mode/1up?view=theater

Page numbered 33 is the next page:

https://archive.org/details/misfortunesofart00hughuoft/page/80/mode/1up?view=theater

If this is the first known printed work that Bacon had a hand in, I wonder if this might be the first cipher hint in print that suggests "Bacon".

[Lawrence Gerald]

Liked "nor so in his bloated and tedious The Baconian Heresy a work marred by selective suppression and gross misrepresentation of the facts and the evidence. "

Thanks AP for saying it the way it is.

 

Stratfordians like to refer back on Robertson's very  low calorie book as evidence to support their Blind stupidity while demonstrating The Four Idols in action

[Light-of-Truth]

The following lines for Elizabeth who was present are taken from the, "AN INTRODVCTION penned by Nicholas Trotte Gentleman one of the society of Grayes-Inne; which was pronounced in manner following."

Vnto Astreas name we honour beare,
Whose sound perfections we doe more admire,
Then all the vanted store of Muses guifts.
Let this be one (which last you put in vre,
In well deprauing that deserueth praise)
No eloquence, disguising reasons shape,
Nor Poetrie, each vaine affections nurce,
No various historie that doth leade the minde
Abroad to auncient tales from instant vse,
Nor these, nor other moe, too long to note,
Can winne Astreas seruants to remoue
Their seruice, once deuote to better things.

So Francis Bacon, her son, is named as being one of the contributors from Gray's Inn and was likely present somewhere in the audience or backstage. Elizabeth certainly enjoyed being referred to as Astreas the Virgin Goddess of Justice, but silently she must have been thinking about her son's contribution to The Misfortunes of Arthur.

After studying the page numbered 33, I wonder about CONAN, a faithful Councillor. Does CONAN hint at BACON?

Anyway, Elizabeth was there and Bacon was her son and played a role in the production. I am sure she was proud and was paying very close attention.

There is an interesting article about this play and its message to Elizabeth (linked below and also an attached PDF).

Decoding Misfortunes: Advice to Elizabeth I and Her Subjects by Lorna Wallace

When they presented The Misfortunes of Arthur before Elizabeth I and her court in February 1588, the playwrights situated their work within a tradition of drama and literature offered as counsel to the monarch. This article examines Misfortunes as a play that offers advice about the nature of counsel itself by considering how such counsel circulated across a variety of forms. By repurposing mythic British history and adapting classical texts, from Seneca’s tragedies to Lucan’s De Bello Civili, the authors align the play with these texts’ politically charged concerns about governance. Misfortunes also follows the example set by speculum principis, or ‘mirror for princes’, presented in other literature, primarily the previous Inns of Court play Gorboduc (1562) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. The tapestry of influence in Misfortunes would have been identifiable by Elizabeth and her courtiers; the tenets of humanist education would have prepared them well to decode the play in light of topical politics.

 

EarlyTheatre_24-2_L_Wallace.pdf

[RoyalCraftiness]

On 8/6/2022 at 6:07 AM, Allisnum2er said:

Hi A Phoenix,

I just had a quick look at "The Misfortunes of Arthur" and I noticed something worth looking.

https://archive.org/details/misfortunesofart00hughuoft/page/14/mode/2up?view=theater&q=bacon

The upper letter V of Vther, on the first line, form with the letters T and A the Hebrew word TAV meaning "mark" or "seal".

TAV is also the LAST letter of the Hebrew alphabet and a refererence to the CROSS.

Aleph -Tav is the same as Alpha and Omega , the Beginning and the End.

I took it as an invitation to take a closer look at the Beginning and at the End of the book, and here is what I found.

THE BEGINNING ...

Notice the italic letter h in "came upon the stage" that looks like a letter b.

And in the alignment of "bacon" we have the "gar" of "garments".

GAR/GOR is a synonym of SPEARE.

THE END ...

WAG is a synonyme of SHAKE and GOR is a synonyme of SPEARE.

Could it be a subterfuge used by  F.B.( Frauncis Bacon) to conceal that he was WILL SHAKE-SPEARE (WAG-GOR) ?

Right at the end we can see 3 dots and an emblem with 3 parts.

33 is the simple cipher of BACON.

TAV is Tau, and it is the mark (TAW) placed in prominence on the forehead of those who are to be saved as instructed in Ezekiel 9:4. Some people still make a cross symbol (as instructed by the Church) on their foreheads to mimic the story detail. The symbol of Tau is used throughout the mysteries that are attached to the Holy Royal Arch and it relates to the man who is saved or protected from the wrath of God despite his evil/sinful ways. Saint Anthony of Egypt is the character most associated with the wearing of the Tau (he who is the symbol of acts of redemption and repentance). He passed on a cloak to St Paul which was marked with the Tau. Tau is sometimes called Saint Anthony's cross. As a subject matter St Anthony and St Paul were quite popular during the early 17th century. This paining by David Teniers  is well know for its use of rich symbolism and geometric composition to relay a heretical message that was popular after the Italian Renaissance. The Church did not like this sort of treatment. It depicts the Tau on the cloak and the cross of crucifixion which is clearly not a Tau (The Church would have had you believe that one was the symbol of the other). This treatment is making a distinction between the Jewish writings/teachings and the Roman Church's take on it. One can assume the Church would have preferred to see a cross worn as the symbol of salvation. Using the Tau is giving importance to the Hebrew text and the Greek letter, and we know there was no love lost between the Roman Church and the Jews (or the Hellenes) who had more or less been neutered in Europe by Rome since the 13th century for the insolence (among other things) for not accepting Jesus Christ as the messiah and promoting the wildly popular alternate mystery teachings of the Kabbalah in Spain (A Catholic Kingdom).

To have a Tau in prominence atop a text is informing you of the belief system of the author if it has any meaning at all.  To see a text headlined with a TAU in England at this time is not surprising.

This is a fun painting to try and deduce the composition/planning if that interests you.

[Light-of-Truth]

I'm sorry for having some fun myself! A couple busy weeks of family, and ETC., broke today, finally.

Hey Kate, do you see some "Sacred Geometry"? I see angles, points, and lines for sure. 🙂

[Light-of-Truth]

1 hour ago, RoyalCraftiness said:

To have a Tau in prominence atop a text is informing you of the belief system of the author if it has any meaning at all.  To see a text headlined with a TAU in England at this time is not surprising.

To use a phrase that just popped in my audio world, "Connecting the dots", I kind of feel like what we do see and follow are the belief systems that we stumble on, and also the hints and clues of the same systems they believed. Maybe that is what I do sometimes even if nobody else does.

The TUA (TVA) is big. The 1609 Sonnets, three Ts and an O are obvious in several ways in the cipher Dedication Poem.

Here is one that is just one of many very easy ones to see that does not even reflect the geometry above;

TO.THE.ONLIE.
THESE.

So yea, maybe I am only learning who is leaving these symbols. Another level is why they left them. Maybe there is another level where all that is behind and one leaves hints and clues for future generations who are on higher levels! Its very exciting to consider I have so much to learn when some days I feel like I have already exhausted all paths and just want to take a nap. LOL

So the "gentlemen" at Gray's Inn may have thrown a TVA into this 1587 production for the Queen. It speaks for who they were, and where they were. It also tells us who she was us and what she wanted to hear. Some of us can find hints of who Bacon was and who she was to him.

CJ, may I ask for a quick reply on what I have been thinking about today? A coincidence? My imagination based on my beliefs? Even though a facsimile from 1900 or so of the original 1587 version, I see two page 32s, and page 33 is not numbered correctly. In my belief world the number 33 is BACON. I can demonstrate connections way back to Bacon's life that add some belief support. But of course, proof is impossible. But I hope Truth will shape my belief as much or more than a Lie.

Elizabeth was there, as documented. Bacon's name is on the printed play. He must have been there. Did they make eye contact? I hope so, with smiles and winks.

It may all be nothing, I accept that. Possible Elizabeth only thought of "Frauncis Bacon" that night Feb 28, 1587/88 as her once upon a time "Little Lord Keeper" kid neighbor and was more interested in "Nicholas Trotte" who wrote her intro.