"
Perhaps the reader will better understand Sonnet 81 if I insert the
words necessary to fully explain it.
Or shall I [Bacon] live your Epitaph to make,
Or you [Shakespeare] survive when I in Earth am rotten,
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name [Shakespeare] from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I [Bacon] once gone to all the world must die,
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie,
Your monument shall be my [not your] gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall ore read,
And tongues to be your being [which as an author
was not] shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead,
You [Shakespeare] still shall live, such vertue
hath my pen [not your own pen, for you never wrote a line]
Where breathe most breaths even in the mouths of men.
This Sonnet was probably written considerably earlier than 1609, but at
that date Bacon's name had not been attached to any work of great
literary importance.
After the writer had learned the true meaning of Sonnet 81, his eyes
were opened to the inward meaning of other Sonnets, and he perceived
that Sonnet No.
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