As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a new book offers shocking proof that all songs recorded by The Beatles were actually written by 16th-century authors Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon. “When they weren’t busy fronting for William Shakespeare, Marlowe and Bacon wrote and performed over 400 songs whose lyrics and music were later discovered in a hole in Blackburn, Lancashire, by Beatles manager Brian Epstein,” says Semolina Pilchard, author of With a Little Help From My Elizabethan Friends. “A note was found with the songs which read: ‘Hark! Wisheth thou to knowest a secret? I vouchsafe these ballads maketh thee bigger than Jesus.’”
Pilchard insists that Marlowe faked his own death in 1593 and tried his hand at songwriting under the pseudonym Maxwell Edison. He teamed up with Bacon and, later, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (the quiet one), and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby (the funny one). The four became quite popular, but divisions grew between them, including de Vere’s increased spiritualism and Bacon’s courting of a Japanese conceptual artist renowned for her “no ink or paper” calligraphy. The quartet’s last public performance was a concert given on the rooftop of Hampton Court Palace, with Bacon saying, “Great and many thankings, good sirs, and grant us the power to pass thine audition.”
Beatles drummer Ringo Starr could not be reached for comment and a spokesperson for Paul McCartney said, “Paul’s been dead since 1966. Miss him. Miss him.”