This Man Told Us Who Wrote Shakespeare (includes an update on cycles)

[@CyclesandTrends]

Hi, links to Part One and Part Two are in the notes.

[@zardozmania]

Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare. Yes. He did have some help, but mostly it was him.

[@patricktilton5377]

The only pro-Baconian fact cited in this video has to do with the "Jan 22" date at the bottom of Keats' poem, which is Bacon's birthday. But it's also one of the 90-odd days in winter, when this poem was written ("this wintry day"). Whether Keats was singling out Bacon's birthday is a matter of opinion, but I can see why a Baconian would get all tingly about this datum. The "clouds of Albion" obviously refer to the storm-clouds that rain down upon King Lear in Act III. I don't see the 'clouds' as being Albion's sons -- i.e. your reference to Blake's 'Coban', son of Albion. Keats is describing a duel of sorts between Damnation/Fire and the rain which fell on Lear during the storm in Act III. Keats expects, it seems, to be burned up in the "Fire" -- i.e. suffer a kind of Damnation -- yet he hopes that the rains will create a steam which is himself, burnt up, transforming into a Phoenix-like cloud. "When through the oak forest I am gone, / Let me not wander in a barren dream" -- this seems to be an echo of Dante in the "selva oscura" ['dark forest'] at the beginning of the INFERNO. Indeed, the "Chief poet" he mentions -- undoubtedly 'Shakespeare' -- is an echo of "l'altissimo poeta" ["the loftiest poet"] mentioned in INFERNO IV:80, a reference to Virgil by one of the other poets dwelling in Limbo along with Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. In INFERNO, Canto I, when Dante finds out that the one who appears to him when he's at his lowest (beset by the three beasts preventing him from reaching the 'hill' behind which the Sun beckons him on, i.e. Mt. Purgatory and Paradise) is, indeed, the ghost of Virgil, Dante says: "O degli altri poeti onore e lume," ["O of all other poets honour and light," [Geoffrey Bickersteth translation]. Keats is purposely echoing Dante in this sonnet, honoring Shakespeare as HIS "Chief poet" just as Dante honored Virgil as "l'altissimo poeta" -- as HIS loftiest poet. Keats seems not to be anticipating -- let alone desirous of -- the traditional Christian salvation that a Pilgrim/Poet like Dante sought (indeed, was desperate for). Rather, Keats seems to have sought a mystical transformation whereby he -- as a sinner condemned to the fires of Damnation -- like a character in Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, might be rained down upon, as Lear was, the water dousing the fires of Damnation, leaving the steam to rise like the Phoenix: "Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire." The supposed "Bacon" acrostic -- reading upwards "B...C...A...On" --well, I can see why a Baconian would get excited by that, especially in conjunction with the "Jan 22" date on which it was written, but it doesn't impress me as much. Maybe if the letters were in the proper order, but they aren't. Keats wrote an acrostic poem which spells the name GEORGIANA AUGUSTA KEATS in 21 lines, all in proper order. I don't deny that there are 4 lines which contain the letters 'O', 'A', 'C', and 'B' -- though you ignore the 'O' in the poem's 1st line and, instead, opt for the 'On' in the poem's title -- and that IS the poem's title, despite your questioning of that: the rhyme-scheme of the 14 lines beginning with "O golden tongued Romance..." is ABBA ABBA CDCD EE. The line "On sitting down to read King Lear again" may be an acceptable pentameter verse, but it doesn't rhyme with any of the following 14 lines, and isn't grammatically connected to the following line (i.e. the sonnet's actual 1st line). Properly, the 1st letters of the 14 lines are: OFLS ABMT CBWL BG, out of which you can get BACO (but no 'N') leaving FLS BMT BWL and G. It doesn't seem likely that Keats was aiming for any acrostic message here, but I'll grant that finding 'BACOn" jumbled up out-of-order in this -- including the sonnet's title -- ought to get a Baconian's shingle to tingle. But I'm not convinced Keats was implicitly outing Bacon as Shakespeare. And he wasn't referencing Blake's 'Coban' with his "clouds of Albion" reference, either. He was purposely echoing Dante, honoring Shakespeare as "Chief poet" just as Dante honored Virgil in the INFERNO, and aspiring to an Ovidian metamorphosis whereby the rains of Lear's storm transform his Damnation-by-'Fire' into a flying-away Phoenix. This "Fire + Water = Steam" equation Keats aspires to is perhaps also an echo of the final pair of sonnets in Shakespeare's Sonnets, #s 153 and 154. In them, Cupid, the little Love-god, falls asleep, laying his "heart-inflaming brand" aside, which is picked up by a nymph, a "maid of Dian" who plunges it into "a cold valley-fountain" ["a cool well"] which becomes "a seething bath" which acts as a "healthful remedy" to ailing folk. 'Shakespeare', however, "found no cure" in those waters, because he -- his "mistress' thrall" -- could only get the help he needs from his "mistress' eyes" which can re-ignite Cupid's doused torch: "Love's fire heats water, water cools not love." Of course, Shakespeare's poem "THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE" might also be alluded to by Keats in his final line about "new Phoenix wings" -- as well, perhaps, as a reference to the Eagle which Dante dreams about in PURGATORIO, Canto IX, up past the sphere of Fire to the true entrance to Purgatory proper -- it having been a lady named Lucia [Lucy] who had descended to where Dante was sleeping, and carried him up. This echoes the tale told to Dante in Canto II of the INFERNO, when Virgil explains how Beatrice had descended into Hell, into 'Limbo' where Virgil was, and she told him then that a 'Lady' ['Donna' -- undoubtedly the Virgin Mary, unnamed in this line in the INFERNO] sent 'Lucia' ['Lucy'] to go to Dante's aid, whereupon Lucia went to where Beatrice was -- seated next to "l'antica Rachele" ["the ancient Rachel"] -- prompting Beatrice to immediately descend from Heaven into Hell to draft Virgil into her service, for Dante's sake. Later, while dreaming in Ante-Purgatory, Dante dreams of being snatched up by an Eagle and passing through the fiery sphere atop the atmosphere, that dream-eagle actually being Lucia, the go-between sent from Mary to Beatrice to effect his salvation. Dante's survival of that fiery layer above the atmosphere (in his dream) prefigures his passage through the fire separating the final terrace of Purgatory where Lust is punished, through which Dante has to willingly pass in order to reach Beatrice . . . which Virgil seems to tease him about, to get him to get the courage to pass through the flames -- rather like a Phoenix -- from the Earthly Paradise at the summit of the mountain, where Dante loses Virgil, but finds Beatrice, whose name means 'Blessed Woman'. Keats was obviously riffing on Dante, and he combined that Dantean imagery with the storm from Act III of KING LEAR to produce a poem about transformation, the transcending of Damnation through a heaven-sent rainstorm. He may have been alluding to Shakespeare's final pair of sonnets, as well as his PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE . . . but he wasn't saying a damn thing about the authorship of Shakespeare. Nice try, though!

[@CyclesandTrends]

Thanks for your comment and interesting detail, Patrick. As I indicated in the video, I too am circumspect about the Albion reference, but as to the acrostic and the date. given Keats' association with the Rosicrucian/Freemasonic orders, I believe the message he was leaving was clear. We will just have to agree to disagree 🙂