The Shakespeare Myth. Durning-Lawrence Edwin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I should perhaps mention, is scarcely likely to have ever seen Shakespeare, as he was only 15 years of age when Shakespeare died. On the cover of this pamphlet will be found a reduced facsimile of the title page of the Folio of 1623. It is almost inconceivable that people with eyes to see should have looked at this so-called portrait for 287 years without perceiving that it consists of a ridiculous, "putty-faced mask," fixed upon a stuffed dummy clothed in a trick coat.4

      The "Tailor and Cutter" newspaper, in its issue of 9th March, 1911, stated that the figure, put for Shakespeare, 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," prints the two halves of the coat put tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, as shewn here on page 2, and says: —

      "It is passing strange that something like three centuries should have been allowed to elapse before the tailor's 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 back part; 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 [exactly as our illustration on page 2] represent the foreparts of the same garment, the polling would give an unanimous vote in the negative."

      Facing the title page of the 1623 first Folio of the plays, on which the stuffed and masked dummy appears, is the following description (of which I give a photo-facsimile), which, as it is signed B. I., is usually ascribed to Ben Jonson: —

To the Reader

      This Figure, that thou here seest pur,

      It was for gentle Shackspeare 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 cuer writ in brasse.

      But, since he cannot, Reader, lookc

      Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

B.I.=

      If my readers will count all the letters in the above, including the four v's, which are used instead of the two w's, they will find that there are 287 letters, a masonic number often repeated throughout the Folio. My book, "Bacon is Shakespeare," was published in 1910 (i.e., 287 years after 1623), and tells for the first time the true meaning of these lines.

      B. I. never calls the ridiculous dummy a portrait, but describes it as "the Figure," "put for" (i.e., instead of), and as "the Print," and as "his Picture," and he distinctly tells us to look not at his (ridiculous) Picture, but (only) at his Booke.

      It has always been a puzzle to students who read these verses why B. I. lavished such extravagant praise upon what looks so stiff and wooden a figure, about which Gainsborough, writing in 1768, says: "Damn the original picture of him… for I think a stupider face I never beheld except D… k's… it is impossible that such a mind and ray of heaven, could shine with such a face and pair of eyes."

      To those capable of properly reading the lines, B. I. clearly tells the whole story. He says, "The Graver had a strife with Nature to out-doo the life." In the New English Dictionary, edited by Sir James Murray, we find more than six hundred words beginning with "out." Every one of these, with scarcely an exception, must, in order to be fully understood, be read reversed; outfit is fit out, outfall is fall out, outburst is burst out, etc. Outlaw does not mean outside the law, but lawed out by some legal process. "Out-doo" therefore must here mean "do out," and was continually used for hundreds of years in that sense. Thus in the "Cursor Mundi," written in the Thirteenth Century, we read that Adam was "out-done" [of Paradise]. In 1603 Drayton published his "Barons' Wars," and in Book V. s. li. we read,

      For he his foe not able to withstand,

      Was ta'en in battle and his eyes out-done.

      B. I. therefore tells us that the Graver has done out the life, that is, covered it up and masked it. The Graver has done this so cleverly that for 287 years (i.e., from 1623 till 1910) learned pedants and others have looked at the dummy without perceiving the trick that had been played upon them.

      B. I. then proceeds to say: – "O, could he but have drawne his wit as well in brasse, as he hath hit his face." Hit, at that period, was often used as the past participle of hide, with the meaning hid or hidden, exactly as we find in Chaucer, in "The Squieres Tale," where we read, ii. 512, etc.,

      Right as a serpent hit him under floures

      Til he may seen his tyme for to byte.

      This, put into modern English prose, means, Just as a serpent hid himself under the flowers until he might see his time to bite.

      I have already explained how B. I. tells the reader not to look at the picture, but at the book; perhaps the matter may be still more clear if I give a paraphrase of the verses.

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 mask'd Picture, but his Booke.

      "Do out" appears as the name of the little instrument something like a pair of snuffers, called a "douter," which was formerly used to extinguish candles. Therefore, I have correctly substituted "extinguish" for "out-do." 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. "Wit" in these lines means absolutely the same as "mind" which I have used in its place, because I feel sure that it refers to the fact that upon the miniature of Bacon in his eighteenth year, painted by Hilliard in 1578, we read: – "Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem," the translation of which is – "If one could but paint his mind!"

      This important fact which can neither be disputed nor explained away, viz., that the figure upon the title page of the first Folio of the plays in 1623 put 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 drunken, illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon, and shows us quite clearly that the name "Shakespeare" was used as a left-hand, a pseudonym, behind which the great author, Francis Bacon, wrote securely concealed. In his last prayer, Bacon says, "I have though in a despised weed procured the good of all men," while in the 76th "Shakespeare" sonnet he says: —

      Why write I still all one, ever the same,

      And keepe invention in a noted weed.

      That every word doth almost sel my name

      Shewing their birth, and where they did proceed.

      Weed СКАЧАТЬ