The Elements of Power

CHAPTER 1SHAKESPEARE ATE BACON

The Power of Knowledge

IN THE 1960s, WHEN I WAS A SENIOR IN COLLEGE, SOME LITERARY SLEUTHS were debating whether William Shakespeare could actually have written the plays and poetry of, well, William Shakespeare. Called the Baconians, these sleuths had amassed some rather convoluted evidence that the real author of Shakespeare’s works was Sir Francis Bacon. ¹ On the night of my twenty-second birthday, a group of undergraduates rushed into my dorm room and carried me off to the showers, where they threw me under a stream of cold water, fully clothed. Along with a cold shower, their birthday gift to me was a button that read, “Shakespeare Ate Bacon.” I am telling this story because it was Bacon, my namesake if not ...