During the 19th and 20th Centuries, a host of literary societies came into existence. Not all of these were the preserve of an intellectual elite, a talking shop for self-congratulating professors granting the common folk the privilege of admiring them!
One of the most interesting was the Francis Bacon Society, which was formed with the now unfashionable object of considering the evidence that Bacon might have written the works commonly attributed to William Shakespeare. In our time, it is politically incorrect to even ask this question, because Shakespeare is believed to have been a commoner and Bacon is one of several privileged Elizabethans who has been linked to the Shakespeare plays. Therefore anyone even raising the issue is written off as a snob, before the evidence is even heard.
However, that's not our present concern. I am not interested in arguing about the Authorship Question as it is largely a waste of time. However, the Bacon Society did achieve extraordinary things in the field of lay scholarship as a by product of its main purpose. Many of these topics had to wait almost a century for mainstream scholars like Frances Yates to see their importance. But as a lay society, the FBS was able to make fascinating lateral or as we would now say interdisciplinary researches; they also acquired original Elizabethan and Jacobean texts. Both of these approaches are essential.
A literary society is almost like a religious order, or a lay fraternity. It develops its own culture, ideals, raison d'etre. It preserves and inculcates values. In the case of the FBS, it preserves the impetus of the greatest period in English literature, which was also the great time of book creation and publication, when books were known to be a form of magic, and the cognoscenti poured over them for esoteric clues, puns, puzzles, intellectual stimulation and spiritual satisfaction. My society breaks out of the sterile confines of the Authorship Question, taking the best of academic and lay approaches, and studies:
Lesser-known Elizabethan history, including study of rare books, pseudonymous literature, correspondence etc.
Cipher and Cryptography.
Emblems
Espionage
Secret Societies (Freemasnory, Rosicrucianism)
Magical Literature, esp. Shakespeare
Stylistic analysis (parallelisms)
Elizabethan typography
It also has a unique epistemological position between the strict standards of proof of academe, and the popular world based on
opinion. For it is clear that there are ‘degrees of certainty’ – many bodies surpass these by using subjective exegesis: preaching to the converted. And while this is not the way of academic research, it also reflects the way we must use our judgement in the real world, supposing on the balance of probability in cases where we cannot have proof. This is very important for old fashioned cryptology.
One of the most interesting was the Francis Bacon Society, which was formed with the now unfashionable object of considering the evidence that Bacon might have written the works commonly attributed to William Shakespeare. In our time, it is politically incorrect to even ask this question, because Shakespeare is believed to have been a commoner and Bacon is one of several privileged Elizabethans who has been linked to the Shakespeare plays. Therefore anyone even raising the issue is written off as a snob, before the evidence is even heard.
However, that's not our present concern. I am not interested in arguing about the Authorship Question as it is largely a waste of time. However, the Bacon Society did achieve extraordinary things in the field of lay scholarship as a by product of its main purpose. Many of these topics had to wait almost a century for mainstream scholars like Frances Yates to see their importance. But as a lay society, the FBS was able to make fascinating lateral or as we would now say interdisciplinary researches; they also acquired original Elizabethan and Jacobean texts. Both of these approaches are essential.
A literary society is almost like a religious order, or a lay fraternity. It develops its own culture, ideals, raison d'etre. It preserves and inculcates values. In the case of the FBS, it preserves the impetus of the greatest period in English literature, which was also the great time of book creation and publication, when books were known to be a form of magic, and the cognoscenti poured over them for esoteric clues, puns, puzzles, intellectual stimulation and spiritual satisfaction. My society breaks out of the sterile confines of the Authorship Question, taking the best of academic and lay approaches, and studies:
Lesser-known Elizabethan history, including study of rare books, pseudonymous literature, correspondence etc.
Cipher and Cryptography.
Emblems
Espionage
Secret Societies (Freemasnory, Rosicrucianism)
Magical Literature, esp. Shakespeare
Stylistic analysis (parallelisms)
Elizabethan typography
It also has a unique epistemological position between the strict standards of proof of academe, and the popular world based on
opinion. For it is clear that there are ‘degrees of certainty’ – many bodies surpass these by using subjective exegesis: preaching to the converted. And while this is not the way of academic research, it also reflects the way we must use our judgement in the real world, supposing on the balance of probability in cases where we cannot have proof. This is very important for old fashioned cryptology.