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
Now and now only can a reasonable explanation be given for the first
time of the purpose of the reference to Priscian, in lines 14 and 15,
Plate 21, Page 87. And it is a singular circumstance that so far as the
writer is aware not one of the critics has perceived that the mockery of
Priscian forms a neat English iambic hexameter, indeed, in almost all
modern editions of the Shakespeare plays, both the form and the meaning
of the line have been utterly destroyed. In the original the line reads
"Bome boon for boon prescian, a little scracht, 'twil serve."
Perhaps the reader will be enabled better to understand the sneer and
the mockery by reading the following couplet--
A fig for old Priscian, a little scratcht, 'twil serve
A poet surely need not all his rules observe.
And we still more perfectly understand the purpose of the hexameter form
of the reference to Priscian if we scan the line side by side with the
"revealed" interpretation of the long word honorificabilitudinitatibus.
Bome boon | for boon | prescian | a lit | tle scratcht | 'twil serve
HI LU | DI F | BACO | NIS NA | TI TUI | TI ORBI
These plays F Bacon's offspring are preserved for the world.
This explanation of the real meaning to be derived from the long word
honorificabilitudinitatibus seems to be so convincing as scarcely to
require further proof. But the Author of the plays intended when the
time had fully come for him to claim his own that there should not be
any possibility of cavil or doubt. He therefore so arranged the plays
and the acts of the plays in the folio of 1623 that the long word should
appear upon the 136th page, be the 151st word thereon, should fall on
the 27th line and that the interpretation should indicate the numbers
136 and 151, thus forming a mechanical proof so positive that it can
neither be misconstrued nor explained away, a mechanical proof that
provides an evidence which absolutely compels belief.
The writer desires especially to bring home to the reader the manifest
fact that the revealed and revealing sentence must have been constructed
before the play of "Loues Labor's lost" first appeared in 1598, and that
when the plays were printed in their present form in the 1623 folio the
scenes and the acts of the preceding plays and the printing of the
columns in all those plays as well as in the play of "Loues Labour's
lost" required to be arranged with extraordinary skill in order that the
revealing page in the 1623 folio should commence with the first word of
the revealing page in the original quarto of 1598, and that that page
should form the 136th page of the folio, so that the long word
"Honorificabilitudinitatibus" should appear on page 136, be the 151st
word, and fall upon the 27th line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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