Who was Shakespeare? A minimally educated actor who happened to write the most celebrated works of the English language, or someone else? Don't the Shakespeare plays test your mind and lift your soul regardless of who wrote them? Of course, but Shakespeare's works present an entirely different meaning and challenge when the interpretations stem from the inventiveness and personal biography of Sir Francis Bacon, a Peer of the Realm, scientist, mystic and statesman. What evidence is there that Sir Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans, was the actual author, and why would Bacon disguise his works? As a biography, the sonnets, plays, and poems bare no similarity to the life of the actor "Shak-spere." They do however, reflect the life of Francis Bacon, particularly in the anguish and pain he suffered in his fall from power that began with his trial in 1621. Thirty-three examples of evidence found in the works of Shakespeare, accompanied by twenty-one illustrations, and highly detailed examinations of literary works, manuscripts and monuments from Elizabethan England, support the premise that not only was the name "Shakespeare" a pseudonym for Francis Bacon, but that the playwright Shakespeare was Francis Bacon.