Bacon kept a private memorandum book which he called The Promus of
Formularies and Elegancies which from time to time he jotted down any
words, similies, phrases, proverbs or colloquialisms which he thought might come
useful in his literary work.

The survival of Bacon's personal notes, and the fact that they were used or
parallelled in the Shakespeare plays, has a definite significance. The compiling of
notes, even of commonplaces or proverbs, indicates a purpose.

Proverbs and wisecracks are of little value if in general use. Such phrases
as "thought is free", "seldom cometh the better", and "a fool's bolt is soon shot",
would have little significance if they had not been included by Bacon in his
notes. But he happens to have noted them down.

When two contemporary writers, who never once mention each other, give
repeated expression to the same sequence of thoughts or words; and when
one of them actually leaves us a private notebook written in his own hand, which
contains proverbs, slogans and gags which appear later in the second writer's plays,
then some kind of association is indicated.

When having considered a great number of coincidences we are asked to swallow the
fact that the second writer was not known to be educated at any school, never
wrote a letter to anyone that has survived, never left a notebook of any kind, and
even in his will made no mention of books, literature or the drama, then we must
entertain the possibility that he was acting as a mask, or that he had no relation to
the playwrights..

If Bacon wrote Shakespeare,
the Promus is intelligible -
if he did not,
it is an insoluble riddle."
-Robert Theobald,
Shakespeare Studies In Baconian Light, 1901
 

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