Abstract

Association of the names of Shakespeare and Bacon may recall to the minds of some the longstanding controversy over the authorship of the Shakespearean writings. Discussion of that matter is hardly in place here. It has been resolved by scholarly study, and the verdict has gone in favor of William Shakespeare. However, among the factors that gave rise to the strange hypothesis that the author of Shakespeare's plays was actually the philosopher Francis Bacon is one the significance of which goes far beyond the confines of the superficial and unfounded conclusion that some sought to derive from it. We have in mind the similarity of thought between Shakespeare and Bacon, the similarity of their general philosophical viewpoint. The great poet, who described the world of human thoughts, feelings and deeds with the penetration of a philosopher, and the philosopher in whose conception of the cognition of nature through science and the mastery of its forces by technology there was deep poetic feeling, both belonged to the English Renaissance. Both were imbued with and expressed its atmosphere and the most powerful and progressive of its humanist strivings in the realm of ideas. And on this plane, a comparison of Shakespeare and Bacon is not only possible but valuable