August 27, 2025
Christina Waldman in her latest essay takes a critical look at how Marlovians, Oxfordians and Elizabeth Winkler all conveniently misperceived Bacon’s famous letter where he writes :
“So Desiring You to be Good to Concealed Poets ….”
I have previously written in this blog about Elizabeth Winkler’s slight of the case for Bacon in her book, Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies (“Why Did Elizabeth Winkler Not Interview Any Baconians?” https://christinagwaldman.com/2024/06/27/why-did-elizabeth-winkler-not-interview-any-baconians/). In a comment made one year ago to that post, Mark Rylance attempted to apologize for not coming out stronger as a proponent for Bacon’s contribution to Shakespeare authorship in Winkler’s book. He seemed to be including Winkler in his apology. I had hoped Winkler was sincere and would try to “bone up” on the case for Bacon.
However, I just watched her talk last December at the American University in Paris, “The Shakespeare Industry with Elizabeth Winkler,” Youtube, 12/6/24, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUafv5ryHm8. After rhetorically asking who might be the real Shakespeare, she said (beginning at 17:39):
“Was it Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan Philosopher and Statesman whose knowledge of law, philosophy, foreign languages seemed to match the knowledge in the works? In 1603 Bacon wrote a mysterious letter to a lawyer who was riding to meet the new King James I and he signed off with this wish, ‘So desiring you to be good to concealed poets ….’ So who was the concealed poet? Was it Christopher Marlowe, a playwright and government agent who disappeared in 1593 supported, uh, reportedly murdered just weeks before Shakespeare emerged? What about Edward de Vere, the eccentric 17th Century Earl of Oxford, probably the favorite candidate today …?“
(Actually, Bacon’s career spanned both Queen Elizabeth and King James’s reigns.) Read more…>>
https://christinagwaldman.com/2025/08/27/so-desiring-you-to-be-good-to-concealed-poets/
