We should also notice "out-doo" is spelled with a hyphen. In the language of to-day and still more in that of the time of Shakespeare all, or nearly all, words beginning with out may be read reversed, out-bar is bar out, out-bud is bud out, out-crop is crop out, out-fit is fit out, and so on through the alphabet.
If therefore we may read "out-doo the life" as "doo out the life" meaning "shut out the real face of the living man" we perceive that here also we are told "that the real face is hidden."
The description, with the head line "To the Reader" and the signature "B.I.," forms twelve lines, the words of which can be turned into numerous significant anagrams, etc., to which, however, no allusion is made in the present work. But our readers will find that if all the letters are counted (the two v.v.'s in line nine being counted as four letters) they will amount to the number 287. In subsequent chapters a good deal is said about this number, but here we only desire to say that we are "informed" that the "Great Author" intended to reveal himself 287 years after 1623, the date when the First Folio was published, that is in the present year, 1910, when very numerous tongues will be loosened.
Examine once more the original Stratford Bust, Plate 5, Page 14, and the present Stratford Bust, Plate 6, Page 15, with the large pen in the right hand.
If the Stratford actor were indeed the author of the plays it was most appropriate that he should have a pen in his hand. But in the original monument as shewn in Plate 3, Page 8, the figure hugs a sack of wool or a pocket of hops or may be a cushion. For about 120 years, this continued to be the Stratford effigy and shewed nothing that could in any way connect the man portrayed, with literary work. I believe that this was not accidental. I think that everybody in Stratford must have known that William "Shackspeare" could not write so much as his own name, for I assert that we possess nothing which can by any reasonable possibility be deemed to be his signature.
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CHAPTER III. — The so-called "Signatures."
In Plate 14, Page 36, are shewn the five so-called signatures. These five being the only pieces of writing in the world that can, even by the most ardent Stratfordians, be supposed to have been written by Shakspeare's pen; let us consider them carefully. The Will commences "In the name of God Amen I Willum Shackspeare." It is written upon three sheets of paper and each sheet bears a supposed signature. The Will is dated in Latin "Vicesimo quinto die [Januarij] Mtij Anno Regni Dni nri Jacobi, nunc R Anglie, &c. decimo quarto & Scotie xlix° annoq Dni 1616", or shortly in English 25th March 1616.