John Gardiner

He Sits 'mongst men Like a Descended God: a Midsummer Night's Dream: Love's Labour's Lost: As You Like It (Volume 1) John Gardiner

Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban (1561-1626), created the most infamous literary mask of all time, even affixing a spurious portrait to the title page of the printed First Folio ... William Shakespeare. The Dedicatees of the First Folio, William and Philip Herbert, Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, and other kinsmen such as the celebrated Poet, George Herbert, were treasured friends of Bacon, affirmed in surviving documentation. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost and As You Like It, subjects of this Volume of Essays, contain visionary autobiographical matter providing portraiture of Bacon's boyhood, youth and adolescence. Written commentary and observations from Bacon's contemporaries, especially his fellow dramatist, Ben Jonson, proclaim his eminence and genius among all men living through the Elizabethan/Jacobean Age. Bacon spent his late-adolescence (1576-1579) travelling through Continental Europe, and was personally present in Navarre during the attempted reconciliation between the estranged King Henri and Queen Marguerite, which he famously dramatized years later in Love's Labour's Lost. He Sits 'Mongst Men Like A Descended God examines how Bacon interblended autobiographical experiences within a dramatized framework for presentation on a stage.