Philosophy is made up primarily of in-depth analysis of three of Shakespeare’s most political plays: King Lear, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus. Bacon progresses closely through each play, providing detailed interpretation of the political messages sent by their text. To these analyses and throughout the work, Bacon adds ideas and arguments about Francis Bacon’s intention and his candidacy for authorship, always resting on the basis of the plays’ texts. Lear, she writes, is a warning against the people of the threat of tyranny.
 In Bacon’s analysis of Francis Bacon’s intentions, Lear establishes that monarchy and its ability to create tyrants cannot stand. Bacon turns to Julius Caesar next, which she argues is a warning against both autocracy and oligarchy. Caesar’s rule, his fall at the hands of his own men, and the chaos that follows those men’s attempt to retake power all argue that these are failing political systems, she claims. Francis Bacon is instead clear that only democracy, or representative government, is acceptable. Finally, Bacon turns to Coriolanus. In this last play, she sees a final warning, against democracy and representative government itself. If not properly educated, the people will chose a dictator to govern them, is the message Francis Bacon strives to send. Taken as a whole, Bacon shows us a complete picture of Francis Bacon’s supposed attitudes on politics: a rejection of tyranny and therefore monarchy, a rejection of both autocracy and oligarchy, and a final warning against the dangers of an uneducated electorate.
However, her argument, as the statement above illustrates, is purely circular. She interprets the message of the plays in light of the philosophical intents of their author, but deduces their author from the political messages of the plays.
This is the main lesson to be learned from Delia Bacon’s incredibly scholarship, her deep reading of the Shakespeare canon, and her legacy as the first person to ask the authorship question in modern times. Her life and work – so deeply intertwined – warn us that Shakespeare’s work contains any message searched for with enough vigor and too little focus on hard evidence. When we as authorship researchers look for evidence of authorship within the texts of the plays themselves, we must be cautious of how we guard against our own biases and expectations. Learning of Bacon’s scholarship, it becomes clear that historical documentation is the key to deciphering the authorship question. After all, it is historic documents and their discrepancies that first lead us to question William Shakspere as the author; it must be history, too, which provides an alternative.
	Bacon finally visited Stratford, soon after the publication of her book. She examined the grave of Shakspere, and wondered if final and conclusive evidence of his authorship (or Francis Bacon’s) might be hidden inside. Within a year of Philosophy’s publication, she had suffered a mental breakdown, and her brother demanded that she be sent back to the United States, where she was summarily institutionalized. She died months later, leaving her legacy as an obsessive but brilliant thinker on Shakespeare, and the first major questioner of his legitimacy as author of the Shakespeare plays.
