The Age of Enlightenment planted the seeds for Speculative Freemasonry and the Rosicrucian movement. It was also a time that gave us some of the most classic plays ever written: Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and many more from the pen of William Shakespeare. But, who was Shakespeare? The few known signatures of William Shakespeare suggest that he was hardly able to write, much less create the Shakespearean plays. If Shakespeare was not the author, who was? This 1888 photographic reproduction of William Francis C. Wigston"s classic "Bacon, Shakespeare and the Rosicrucians" states the author" case that it was Francis Bacon who wrote the classic plays as well as laid the foundation for Freemasonry and the Rosicrucians.