I'm here with Peter Dawkins. Peter, you're a founder and principal of the Francis Bacon Research Trust and author of The Shakespeare Enigma and you delivered Wisdom of Shakespeare seminars in a number of venues including at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London from 1997 to 2005. And you know quite a lot about the Shakespeare authorship question don't you? Quite a lot, yes. Quite a lot. What first made you doubt Shakespeare's authorship? I suppose, what you just said, it's the wisdom that's in it. It's very very profound wisdom, wonderful philosophies. The author clearly been a student and an expert in classical philosophy and other things and also legal matters in it which are not just silly, they're very very accurate and so on. The whole education of the author just didn't match the life we know of the actor. So I thought, "Hang on a moment, there's something not quite right here." And then I found various people at the time actually were questioning the authorship or even hinting who the author might have been. I think it's the wisdom of Shakespeare, the wisdom that's contained in those works has kept people interested in these works for more than 400 years. What's the evidence that the author was tapped into a strong philosophical tradition, would you say? There's a huge amount of evidence. It starts off with the two poems that announce his name, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, and it gives the entrance, the mysteries as described as the two pillars you have to pass between. And one is associated with in the classical terms with Venus, and the other with Mars and they're lovers to eternity and so on, but Venus also falls in love with Adonis. And so the first Shakespeare poem is Venus and Adonis, and it's really not correct love. She takes the initiative, she's quite forceful in trying to her lust for Adonis, but it doesn't work. Adonis is not interested. He's more interested in hunting the boar. And then you got Lucrece. And you've got another similar thing, only this time it's the man who's dominant. He's kind of a Mars-like creature. And he rapes Lucrece, who's more Venus-like in a purer away. So you've got these two poems all about love which isn't love, it's more about lust, and each one identifies a Venus character and a Mars character. And Venus and Adonis one, she's a goddess and Adonis is mortal, so you got the idea of the immortal mortal. And then with the Lucrece poem, you've got the Tarquin who's the king, well, kings at that time were considered gods. So he's a kind of immortal from that point of view although he's human, and Lucrece is Venus-like in a more innocent way. So you've got the Mars and Venus stories in both those poems, and yet each poem is opposite to each other in a sense, one, the Venus takes initiative, the other that the Mar's character Tarquin takes the initiative. So the two poems, they stand as the pillars to the entrance to the whole mystery. And another way the pillars is seen is as the Gemini, you know, the twins, the immortal and the mortal twin, Pollux and Castor,. And that's another way the two pillars were described in tradition. And in fact, their glyph, astrological glyph shows two pillars with a lintel and a threshold underneath. So you enter into the mysteries that way. I don't mean that much about the two pillars. What's this relating to that people might know about?? Well, the ones you can still see very prominent are in cathedrals where you go in the west door and the great big pillar up on one side, a pillar up on the other with a spire or a tower or something on them, Chartres is a great example and it's got a one spire which is high, on the other, a sun on the other, on the moon. It's another way of describing them. And the pillars you pass between, one is called the right hand and the other is the left hand pillar. That's from the building's point of view. So you don't read them right and left as you walking into the building, you read them as you're walking intot, as if you are the building. So it's how you read all these images and so on, which are showing these wisdom things. You see truth face to face as it were like I'm looking at you, I might describe you. That's right hand that's left hand, but it's not. That's your right hand over their, that's your left hand over there. So people do get mixed up about that. But once you've sorted it, it's great. And the classical ones, which are so well known in Freemasonry, are those of pillars of Solomon's Temple, called the Jachin and Boaz, which are mentioned again and again in the Shakespeare works and come out come out in the printed form. Where are they mentioned in the Shakespeare's works? Well, the first classic one of course is the Shakespeare folio. And they got the portrait, Verse, which is on the first page, very unusual for the title page. And it's describing the portraits and the Verse is signed BI, which most people take to mean Ben Jonson. Well it can mean Ben Jonson, he's called the keeper of the Trophonian Denne in the greater sizes Holden in Parnassus, which means he is a guardian, guardian of an oracle centre that gives knowledge and wisdom. But BI can also represent Boaz and Jachin, which are the pillars of Freemasonry pillars of Solomon's Temple. The students won't know about the Great Assizes. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Well, it's ascribed to somebody called Withers and he was a great poet and other things, and he was around during the whole of Shakespeare time. So he was in the know. He really knew what was going on, but the actual book, Greater Assizes was published, I think, in 1645 if I remember rightly, well after Shakespeare folio was published. But in it he gives away a lot of secrets, including saying he gives a list of the different poets and playwrights. And Shakespeare I think it's listed 11 in the list, and it goes on referring to him as a poet. Then it says, "No, he's a mimic. He's pretending to be a poet." So there Withers is sort of saying, "No, this this guy's a front man. He's not the real poet."
