The engraving represents a tempest with beacon lights; No; it represents "The Tempest" of Shakespeare and tells you that the play is filled with Bacon lights. (In the sixteenth century Beacon was pronounced Bacon. "Bacon great Beacon of the State.")
We have already pointed out that "The Tempest," as Emile Montegut shewed in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1865, is a mass of Bacon's revelations concerning himself.
At the bottom (see Plate 27, Page 115, and Plate 31, Page 123), within the "four square corners of fact," surrounded with disguised masks of Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce, is shewn the same man who gave the scroll to the Spearman, see Plate 29, Page 118 (note the pattern of his sleeves). He is now engaged in writing his book, while an Actor, very much overdressed and wearing a mask something like the accepted mask of Shakespeare, is lifting from the real writer's head a cap known in Heraldry as the "Cap of Maintenance." Again we refer to our quotation on page 48.
"Those glorious vagabonds....
Sooping it in their glaring Satten sutes."
Is not this masquerading fellow an actor "Sooping it in his glaring Satten sute"? The figure which we say represents Bacon, see Plate 28, wears his clothes as a gentleman. Nobody could for a moment imagine that the masked creature in Plate 31 was properly wearing his own clothes. No, he is "sooping it in his glaring Satten sute."
The whole title page clearly shows that it is drawn to give a revelation about Shakespeare, who might just as well have borne the name of Shotbolt or of Wagstaffe or of Shakespur, see "The Tempest," Act v., Scene I.
"The strong bass'd promontorie
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt up."
There are also revealing title pages in other books, shewing a spear and an actor wearing a single spur only (see Plate 35, Page 153).
It will be of interest to shew another specially revealing title page, which for upwards of a hundred years remained unaltered as the title page to Vol. I. of Bacon's collected works, printed abroad in Latin. A different engraving, representing the same scene was also published in France. These engravings, however, were never reproduced or used in England, because the time for revelation had not yet come. Bacon is shewn seated (see Plate 33, Page 131). Compare his portrait with the engraving of the gentleman giving his scroll to the Spearman in the Gustavus Silenus frontispiece, Plate 27, Page 115, and Plate 28, Page 118. Bacon is pointing with his right hand in full light to his open book, while his left hand in deepest shadow is putting forward a figure holding in both its hands a closed and clasped book, which by the cross lines on its side (the accepted symbol of a mirror) shows that it represents the mirror up to Nature, i.e., Shakespeare's plays. Specially note that Bacon puts forward with his LEFT hand the figure holding the book which is the mirror up to Nature. In the former part of this treatise the writer has proved that the figure that forms the frontispiece of the great folio of Shakespeare's plays, which is known as the Droeshout portrait of Wm. Shakespeare, is really composed of two LEFT arms and a mask. The reader will now be able to fully realise the revelation contained in Droeshout's masked figure with its two left arms when he examines it with the title page shown, Plate 33, Page 131.
[Illustration: Plate XXXIII. Facsimile Title Page.]