I am Shakespeare

Amongst all the people whom they thought might have masqueraded behind the name of Shakespeare was the Francis Bacon who lived at that time, and to whom my family is related, according to my father. He was a tremendous chap, probably the only Renaissance man we really had here in England. He was a politician scientist, philosopher and inventor all at the same time, entirely in the spirit of the great figures of the Renaissance. He almost invented the refrigerator. He tried to put chickens in ice to preserve them. He really was an astonishing person. Queen Elizabeth I loathed him, but he took no notice; he was a free spirit. Perhaps my father's story about this genius busybody helped to make Shakespeare all the more familiar to me, but I realized that all this is just a story. I've always read a lot of Shakespeare and he is one of the writers who has inspired me to produce some of my best work.

Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud, Phaidon, 1994