The Other Works of William Shakespeare, 001 Introduction

Let not this mad shepherd taint history,

By drawing lines tween stars misunderstood.

He declares for all time no defense none,

For the feverish dream this poem proceeds.

Let not a shepherd who himself straying,

Make trails that lead far from what is and was.

In my own defense, I have not buried,

Any fact, that might, discount this story.

If there is truth herein, not just seeming,

then coincidence reins in this supreme.

I started researching this novel late in 1998.   I did not know at the time that I was researching a story.   I had recently added another book to my library on the question of who wrote Shakespeare and in my reading resolved to prove that Shakespeare, one and for all was not the author of Shakespeare’s plays.

It was obvious, from the works that I had read, that Shakespeare could not have written any of the plays.   So I went to the Texas A&M Library and started digging.   Here were the simple facts I was looking for; was there any reliable evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the actor, William Shakespeare, was there any reliable evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the writer William Shakespeare and last, was there any reliable evidence that William Shakespeare the actor was William Shakespeare the author.

I knew that If I could find a strong denial of any of those points, that I could shoot down those Idiot ‘Stratfordians’ who denied that my hero, Bacon, had written these plays. I’m a slow methodical researcher. I had to have reliable proofs. It took me four hours of research to utterly prove that I was a fool.

William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote and performed the plays. It did not come to me as a sudden revelation. It came from looking at copies of the original documents and reading what they said. If anyone wants a shortcut to the research that I did, there are two good places to look. Do not look at transcriptions, my research has taught me that one small “…” can leave out a lot of truth.

Look for his last will and testament and the records of his companies payments at court. I didn’t even need the records of Stratford to lose my fond delusion. Fortunately for my sense of intrigue, while I was loosing one mystery, I was finding another. If Shakespeare is Shakespeare, just who is Shakespeare?

And what about the ten missing years just before he becomes a major force in world literature. With just a bit more research I came to a clear and obvious conclusion. The ten-year period that Shakespeare is missing, is a golden opportunity for a writer.  So then I decided to tell the story of William Shakespeare.  There is enough data present for me to come up with another wild, twisted theory. That Shakespeare was a secret agent. I took a week off from work and started to really do some research. The more I researched the more it became obvious. If Shakespeare was not involved in espionage, then he was the only man in England that wasn’t. Everyone was involved in the intrigues of the day. If you were a Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Mystic or Atheist, you were involved in a plot.

So my basic concept for this story became clear.  Involve or credit directly everything possible to Shakespeare.   One year after William Shakespeare moves to London, the Spanish Armada is defeated.  Coincidence?   Of course not!

In telling this tale, I have taken much of the physics, faith and magic that were believed in at the time, and treated them as absolute fact.    To a large degree, it is not possible to understand the people of this day and age without taking them in the context of their superstitions.

Bob