In his 1971 essay "Bill and I," the author and scientific historian Isaac Asimov made the case that Bacon did not write Shakespeare's plays because certain portions of the Shakespeare canon show a misunderstanding of the prevailing scientific beliefs of the time that Bacon, one of the most intensely educated people of his time, would not have possessed. Asimov cites an excerpt from the last act of "The Merchant of Venice", as well as the following excerpt from "A Midsummer Night's Dream":