Contents: the problem; William Shakespeare's life and eduction; Francis Bacon's life and education; comparison of the plays with Bacon's prose work; Promus; comparison of the plays with Bacon's life; Hamlet; Twelfth Night, Love's Labor's Lost;, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Midsummer's Night's Dream; historical plays 1591; Venus and Adonis and Lucrece; Comedy of Errors and other plays; dark period 1601-1606; Bacon's late prosperity 1606-1620; Bacon's fall 1621; contemporary allusions; Folio of 1623; rifts in the clouds.