Delia Bacon, The Woman Who Hated Shakespeare
In England in 1854, a thin, sickly, middle-aged woman sits in a tiny room, night after night, writing feverishly, with very little light and no heat. She is on a mission, indeed she has spent the past several years working on a thesis that she hopes will shock the literary world. Instead when her book is published, it is dismissed by critics, and rejected by readers. This is the true story of a woman who lost her mind and her health trying to prove that Shakespeare was not the author of the 37 plays that bear his name. Her name was Delia Bacon. It somehow seems fitting to write about Delia Bacon on Shakespeare's birthday. After almost five hundred years, we still know little more about him then we did a hundred years ago. The mystery surrounding Shakespeare makes him ripe for those who believe, like Delia Bacon, that a man from a small town with very little education, could write the greatest plays known to man. From the beginning, it seemed as if Delia Bacon was surrounded by bad ...