The Woman Who Haunted Shakespeare's Grave
Why has there never been a movie about Delia Bacon? A Shakespeare's Skull thread-pull...
A couple of weeks ago, my article The Man Who Stole Shakespeare’s Skull, an investigation into the alleged theft of the great Bard’s cranium, was published by Narratively. While researching that article, I came across a couple of related threads that were fascinating but couldn’t be squeezed into the skull story. First, meet the woman who haunted Shakespeare’s grave…
Delia Bacon arrived at the church equipped with “a dark lantern like Guy Fawkes, and some other articles which might have been considered suspicious if the police had come upon us.” It was a gloomy evening in October 1856, 240 years after William Shakespeare had been buried under a stone slab inside Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon. Bacon, a once-acclaimed American author, groped her way down the aisle toward the Bard’s grave.
Beside the chancel in the pitch-black church was a carved funerary bust of Shakespeare. “On my right was the old Player,” wrote Bacon, “looking down on me, but I could not see him. I looked up to the ceiling, but it was not visible; there was something that looked like a midnight sky, and all the long, drawn aisle was in utter darkness.”
When she reached the chancel, she sat by Shakespeare’s grave and gazed at the engraved epitaph, which was written in early modern English but could be translated as: “Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here, Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.”
It was a foreboding warning that the grave should never be disturbed. But Bacon examined the crevices between Shakespeare’s grave and the surrounding stones and determined that she could remove the slab, open the grave, and reveal an incredible secret that would prove her wild theory. Bacon believed that William Shakespeare was not the real author of his plays, and that the proof was hidden in his grave.
Delia Bacon was born into poverty in a log cabin in Tallmadge, Ohio, in 1811. Her father, a frontiersman and missionary, died when she was seven, and Bacon was taken in by family friends in Hartford, Connecticut. She excelled at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary, one of the first educational institutions for women in the US, and became a teacher at just 15. She published her first book, Tales of the Puritans, at the age of 20, beat Edgar Allen Poe in a short story contest, and was acclaimed as a brilliant literary mind. Bacon enjoyed a career as a successful lecturer and public speaker — until a dalliance with a Yale Divinity School student upended her life.
Bacon met Alexander MacWhorter at the boarding house they shared in 1846. They appeared to be happily engaged, but when MacWhorter dumped her and shared her love letters with friends, Bacon’s reputation was ruined. Her brother, who had become a Yale professor, filed charges against MacWhorter for “slander, falsehood, and conduct dishonorable to the Christian ministry,” but MacWhorter was acquitted.
Catharine Beecher tried to rescue Bacon’s reputation by publishing a 300-page book, titled Truth Stranger Than Fiction: A Narrative of Recent Transactions, Involving Inquiries in Regard to the Principles of Honor, Truth, and Justice, Which Obtain in a Distinguished American University. Catharine’s sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, also offered support. It didn’t work, and Bacon fled back to Ohio, where she lived in seclusion and obsessively studied Shakespeare. When she re-emerged, she had developed her life’s theory.
Delia Bacon believed that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him. According to Bacon, the plays were written by the philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (no relation to Delia), along with collaborators such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, to propagate a new political and scientific philosophy. The “Baconian Theory” of Shakespeare authorship, proposed by Delia but named for Francis Bacon, became an enduring subject of debate among Shakespeare scholars, though most dismissed it as fantasy.
Bacon’s efforts to prove her theory plunged her back into poverty and negatively affected her physical and mental well-being. She had found a high-profile supporter in the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson (who later called her “a genius, but mad.”) With his support and some financial backing, she sailed to England in 1853 for research. She spent several years in London and St Albans (the hometown of Francis Bacon), surviving on “the poorest food,” and “without the means of having a fire.” She wrote a manuscript detailing her theory while sitting in bed to keep warm, intending to publish it as a book.
Suffering from illness and desperate for assistance, Bacon wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlett Letter, who was then working as the US Consul in Liverpool. Although he doubted her theory and warned that it would receive criticism, Hawthorne kindly read her manuscript and offered advice on how she might get it published.
With Hawthorne’s help, the first chapter of the manuscript was published — anonymously — in Putnam’s Monthly (A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art) in January 1856. The magazine’s editor found it necessary to disclaim all responsibility for the “startling view” presented by the author. Bacon was subsequently identified — and mocked — in a series of newspaper reviews. “We honor her for so bold an effort in robbing the immortal bard of his laurels,” wrote one newspaper, “but are inclined to think she is mistaken.”
Nevertheless, perhaps energised by the newspaper debate, Bacon asked her friend, the author Eliza Farrar, to assist her in getting to Stratford-upon-Avon. She had become convinced, after studying letters written by Francis Bacon, that secret documents disclosing the real authorship of the plays had been buried with Shakespeare. By opening Shakespeare’s grave, she could conclusively prove her story.
“I tried in vain to dissuade her from this insane project,” wrote Farrar. Bacon was “pale and sad” and “looked so ill,” but begged Farrar for help. “This aid I gave her with many a sad misgiving as to the result.”
When Bacon arrived in Stratford in August 1856, she was, in her own words, “fearfully ill.” She rented a room near Holy Trinity but was too weak to do anything but stare out of the window at the spire. She wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who noted in his diary that she was a “monomaniac” — obsessively fixated on her Shakespeare theory. Eventually, she regained some strength and, according to Hawthorne, “began to haunt the church like a ghost.”
Bacon discussed her theory with the church clerk and vicar, both of whom treated her kindly. The vicar was 87-year-old Reverend Joseph Mendham, who was in poor health (he would die in November) and was likely preoccupied with more pressing matters. Hawthorne later suggested that Mendham might have been impressed by Bacon’s deep knowledge of Shakespeare’s life and death, and by her eloquence and conviction. In any case, the vicar told Bacon she could only visit the church if she was accompanied by him or the clerk, and that she must only inspect the grave without disturbing it.
Unfortunately, in what Hawthorne called her “bewilderment,” Bacon “erroneously” believed she had been given permission to open the grave. One evening in October, she arranged to visit after dark, and the clerk let her into the empty church. While she sat in the gloom on the edge of the grave, she realised she was not alone. “I heard a creaking,” she wrote, “and I knew that the clerk was there and watching me.”
It was then, as Bacon faced the opportunity to lift the stone, open the grave, and solve her mystery, that a terrifying doubt crept into her mind. She began to fear that she might have misinterpreted the clues in Francis Bacon’s letters, and wondered whether the secret documents might actually be buried in the tombs of Bacon, Raleigh, or Spenser rather than the “Old Player”. Ultimately, according to Hawthorne, she was “afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and finding nothing.” The proof would never be found.
Although Delia Bacon abandoned her quest to open Shakespeare’s grave, she did expand upon her “Baconian” theory quite substantially in a 600-page volume published under her name in April 1857 titled The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere [sic] Unfolded. The book featured a preface from Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which he delicately stated that he had not read beyond the initial manuscript. Reviews of the book called it “dull, dry, dreary speculation”, and criticised Bacon for mis-spelling “Shakespeare” as “Shakspeare” — an ongoing tactic of “Baconian” believers. Some reviewers did praise Bacon’s depth of understanding of Shakespeare’s plays, even if she didn’t believe he’d written them.
The physical and mental toll of Bacon’s obsessively-pursued work — and its negative reception — had tragic results. A couple of months after the book’s release, the Mayor of Stratford wrote to Hawthorne, reporting that Bacon was in a “very excited and unsatisfactory state.” In December, Bacon was removed to a private insane asylum in the forest of Henley-in-Arden, eight miles from Stratford. The following April, Bacon was brought back to the US by her nephew and placed at the Hartford Retreat for the Insane. Delia Bacon died in Hartford on 2 September 1859, aged 48, and is buried in New Haven.
In his essay “Recollections of a Gifted Woman,” published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1863, Nathaniel Hawthorne acknowledged the “prodigious error” of Bacon’s theory while highlighting the brilliance of her literary insight and the tragic sacrifice of her life’s work. In his conclusion, Hawthorne described a poignant, imaginative reconciliation between Bacon and the “Old Player”:
“I know not why we should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to mankind so well.”◆
If you haven’t already read The Man Who Stole Shakespeare’s Skull, you can find it on Narratively. The story was featured in the latest editions of The Sunday Long Read and Damn History.
Next time: Another Shakespeare’s Skull thread-pull. Please continue to share and subscribe to help sustain this free newsletter. Thanks for reading.
Thanks Andrew! I'm looking forward to the next part of your Jonathan Martin / Dickens story, too!
Love this stuff – didn't know about Frank Chambers before. Looking forward to Part 3!