Bacon is Shake-Speare: Together with a Reprint of Bacon's Promus of Formularies and EleganciesDurning-Lawrence, Edwin, Sir
History
Bacon is Shake-Speare: Together with a Reprint of Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies
Durning-Lawrence, Edwin, Sir
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Authorship -- Baconian theory
Do out appears in the name of the little instrument something like a
pair of snuffer which was formerly used to extinguish the candles and
called a "Doute." Therefore I have correctly substituted "extinguished"
for "out-doo." At the beginning I have substituted "dummy" for "figure"
because we are told that the figure is "put for" (that is, put instead
of) Shakespeare. In modern English we frequently describe a chairman who
is a mere dummy as a figurehead. Then "wit" in these lines means
absolutely the same as "mind," which I have used in its place because I
think it refers to the fact that upon the miniature of Bacon in his 18th
year, which was painted by Hilliard in 1578, we read:--"Si tabula
daretur digna animum mallem." This line is believed to have been written
at the time by the artist, and was translated in "Spedding":--"If one
could but paint his mind."
In March, 1911, the _Tailor and Cutter_ newspaper stated that the
Figure, put for Shakepeare in the 1623 folio, was undoubtedly clothed in
an impossible coat, composed of the back and the front of the same left
arm. And in the following April the _Gentleman's Tailor Magazine_,
under the heading of a "Problem for the Trade," shews the two halves of
the coat as printed on page 28a, and says: "It is passing strange that
something like three centuries should have been allowed to elapse
before the tailors' handiwork should have been appealed to in this
particular manner."
"The special point is that in what is known as the authentic portrait of
William Shakespeare, which appears in the celebrated first folio
edition, published in 1623, a remarkable sartorial puzzle is apparent."
"The tunic, coat, or whatever the garment may have been called at the
time, is so strangely illustrated that the right-hand side of the
forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the backpart; and so gives a
harlequin appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume
was intentional, and done with express object and purpose."
"Anyhow, it is pretty safe to say that if a Referendum of the trade was
taken on the question whether the two illustrations shown above
represent the foreparts of the same garments, the polling would give an
unanimous vote in the negative."
"It is outside the province of a trade journal to dogmatise on such a
subject; but when such a glaring incongruity as these illustrations show
is brought into court, it is only natural that the tailor should have
something to say; or, at any rate, to think about."
This one simple fact which can neither be disputed nor explained away,
viz., that the "Figure" put upon the title-page of the First Folio of
the Plays in 1623 to represent Shakespeare, is a doubly left-armed and
stuffed dummy, surmounted by a ridiculous putty-faced mask, disposes once
and for all of any idea that the mighty Plays were written by the
illiterate clown of Stratford-upon-Avon.
"He hath _hit_ his face"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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