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
So far as is known there never was any other edition printed until the
play appeared in the Folio of 1623 under the name of "Loues Labour's
lost," and we put before the reader a reduced facsimile of the whole
page 136 of the 1623 Folio, on which the long word occurs, Page 86,
Plate 20, and we give also an exact full size photo reproduction of a
portion of the first column of that page. Page 87, Plate 21.
On comparing the page of the Quarto with that of the Folio, it will be
seen that the Folio page commences with the same word as does the Quarto
and that each and every word, and each and every italic in the Folio is
exactly reproduced from the Quarto excepting that Alms-basket in the
Folio is printed with a hyphen to make it into two words. A hyphen is
also inserted in the long word as it extends over one line to the next.
The only other change is that the lines are a little differently
arranged. These slight differences are by no means accidental, because
Alms-basket is hyphened to count as two words and thereby cause the long
word to be the 151st word. This is exceedingly important and it was only
by a misprint in the Quarto that it incorrectly appears there as the
150th word. By the rearrangement of the lines, the long word appears on
the 27th line, and the line, "What is A.B. speld backward with the horn
on his head" appears as it should do on the 33rd line. At the time the
Quarto was issued, when the trouble was to get Shakespere's name
attached to the plays, these slight printer's errors in the Quarto--for
they are printer's errors--were of small consequence, but when the play
was reprinted in the Folio of 1623 all these little blemishes were most
carefully corrected.
The long word Honorificabilitudinitatibus is found in "Loues Labour's
lost" not far from the commencement of the Fifth Act, which is called
Actus Quartus in the 1623 folio, and on Page 87, Plate 21, is given a
full size photo facsimile from the folio, of that portion of page 136,
in which the word occurs in the 27th line.
On lines 14, 15 occurs the phrase, "Bome boon for boon prescian, a
little scratcht, 'twil serve." I do not know that hitherto any rational
explanation has been given of the reason why this reference to the
pedantic grammarian "Priscian" is there inserted.
The mention of Priscian's name can have no possible reference to
anything apparent in the text, but it refers solely and entirely to the
phrase which is to be formed by the transposition of the twenty-seven
letters contained in the long word Honorificabilitudinitatibus; and it
was absolutely impossible that the citation of Priscian could ever have
been understood before the sentence containing the information which is
of the most important description had been "revealed." We say "revealed"
because the riddle could never have been "guessed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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