Bacon is Shake-Speare | Page 6

The Front of the Left Arm, from Plate VIII]
[Illustration: (not included in list of plates) The Front of Left Arm. From Plate VIII. The Back of Left Arm From Plate VIII. Arranged Tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, as in the _Gentleman's Tailor Magazine_, April, 1911]
Plate 11 shews the front of the left arm, and you at once perceive that you are no longer looking at the back of the coat but at the front of the coat.
[Illustration: Plate XII. The [Mask] Head, from the [so-called] Portrait, by Droeshout, in the 1623 Folio]
Now in Plate 12, Page 32, you see the mask, especially note that the ear is a mask ear and stands out curiously; note also how distinct the line shewing the edge of the mask appears. Perhaps the reader will perceive this more clearly if he turns the page upside down.
[Illustration: Plate XIII. Sir Nicholas Bacon, from the Painting by Zucchero]
Plate 13, Page 33, depicts a real face, that of Sir Nicholas Bacon, eldest son of the Lord Keeper, from a contemporary portrait by Zucchero, lately in the Duke of Fife's Collection. This shews by contrast the difference between the portrait of a living man, and the drawing of a lifeless mask with the double line from ear to chin. Again examine Plates 8, Pages 20, 21, the complete portrait in the folio. The reader having seen the separate portions, will, I trust, be able now to perceive that this portrait is correctly characterised as cunningly composed of two left arms and a mask.
While examining this portrait, the reader should study the lines that describe it in the Shakespeare folio of 1623, a facsimile of which is here inserted.
To the Reader.
This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; Wherein the Grauer had a strife with Nature, to out-doo the life: O, could he but haue drawne his wit As well in brasse, as he hath hit His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that was euer writ in brasse. But, since he cannot, Reader, looke Not on his Picture, but his Booke. B.I.
Plate IX.
VERSES ASCRIBED TO BEN JONSON, FROM THE 1623 FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS.
B.I. call the ridiculous dummy a "portrait" but describes it as the "Figure put for" (that is "instead of") and as "the Print," and as "his Picture"; he likewise most clearly tells us to "looke not on his (ridiculous) Picture, but (only) his Booke." It seems, therefore, evident that he knew the secret of Bacon's authorship and intended to inform those capable of understanding that the graver had done out the life when he writes, "Out-doo the life." In the New English Dictionary, edited by Sir J.A.H. Murray, there are upwards of six hundred words beginning with "Out," and every one of them, with scarcely a single exception, requires, in order to be fully understood, to be read reversed. Out-law does not mean outside of the law, but lawed out by a legal process. "Out-doo" was used only in the sense of "do out"; thus, in the "Cursor Mundi," written centuries before the days of Elizabeth, we read that Adam was out done [of Paradise]; and in Drayton's "Barons' Wars," published in 1603, we find in Book V. s. li.
"That he his foe not able to withstand, Was ta'en in battle and his eyes out-done."
The graver has indeed done out the life so cleverly that for hundreds of years learned pedants and others have thought that the figure represented a real man, and altogether failed to perceive that it was a mere stuffed dummy clothed in an impossible coat, cunningly composed of the front of the left arm buttoned on to the back of the same left arm, as to form a double left armed apology for a man. Moreover, this dummy is surmounted by a hideous staring mask, furnished with an imaginary ear, utterly unlike anything human, because, instead of being hollowed in, it is rounded out something like the rounded outside of a shoe-horn, in order to form a cup which would cover and conceal any real ear that might be behind it.
Perhaps the reader will more fully understand the full meaning of B.I.'s lines if I paraphrase them as follows:--
To the Reader.
The dummy that thou seest set here, Was put instead of Shake-a-speare; Wherein the Graver had a strife To extinguish all of Nature's life; O, could he but have drawn his mind As well as he's concealed behind His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that was ever writ in brasse. But since he cannot, do not looke On his mas'd Picture, but his Booke.
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