ABSTRACT
Delia Bacon’s The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded contains the argument, drawn from the Plays usually attributed to Shakspere, in support of a theory which the Bacon has demonstrated by historical evidences in another work. Bacon applies herself to the demonstration and development of a system of philosophy, which has presented itself to her as underlying the superficial and ostensible text of Shakspere’s plays. Traces of the same philosophy, too, she conceives herself to have found in the acknowledged works of Lord Bacon, and in those of other writers contemporary with him. The principal works of the Elizabethan Philosophy, those in which the new method of learning was practically applied to the noblest subjects, were presented to the world in the form of an enigma. It was a form well fitted to divert inquiry, and baffle even the research of the scholar; and one which would inevitably command a research that could end with the true solution.
