A handwriting expert has added weight to claims
that the Elizabethan author and philosopher Francis Bacon wrote the
plays attributed to Shakespeare.
Maureen
Ward-Gandy claims it is "highly probable"
that Bacon was the author of a recently discovered manuscript
describing a scene which bears a striking similarity to one from
Henry IV. She compared a copy of the handwritten
document, thought to date back to the
1590s when Henry IV was written and published, with the
handwriting of 30 well-known scholars and statesmen of the
Elizabethan era.
Mrs. Ward-Gandy's strong belief that the
handwriting is Bacon's has been hailed by
Bacon supporters as a major breakthrough in proving the true
authorship of the 38 plays, 150 sonnets and two long poems which bear
William Shakespeare's name.
The debate over who wrote what, which has dogged literary critics for
more than a century, resurfaced recently when the manuscript went on
sale at Sotheby's. Comprising a single sheet of 57 neatly handwritten
lines, the document was expected to fetch up to £12,000 but was
unsold. It has since been returned to its secret owner.
Mrs. Ward-Gandy, who outlined her findings in a 20-page report, is a
forensic document examiner, a job which often involves studying
handwriting for the police and Home Office to establish fraud. She
said "The shapes of the letters and style of writing in the
manuscript point to the writing being that of Bacon. It is very
exciting and could settle the argument once and for all that the
Shakespeare plays were in fact written by Bacon."
The scene in the manuscript describes a conversation in which an
innkeeper tells two thieves of "a man that lodged in our house/Last
night that hath three hundred markes in gold." Similar conversations
in an almost identical setting are described in Henry IV.
Francis Carr, historian and the Director of the Shakespeare
Authorship Information Centre in Brighton,
believes the document was a reject script for Henry IV. Mr.
Carr, who dedicated 30 years to proving authorship, believes Bacon
was writing under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare. "I think this
is probably a breakthrough to the whole authorship mystery," he said.
"It could bring the whole subject into the open again. The
information we have built up pointing to Bacon could blow the whole
of Stratford sky high."
From London Evening Standard, July 30, 1992
SirBacon.org - Sir Francis Bacon's New Advancement of Learning
