Dr. Wallace's contention that Mountjoy, the wig-maker, of the corner house in Silver Street where Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman, occasionally slept, was the original of the name of the Herald in Henry V.[14] really surpasses, in want of knowledge of History, anything that the writer has ever previously encountered, and he is afraid that it really is a measure of the value of Dr. Wallace's other inferences connecting the illiterate Stratford Rustic with the great Dramatist who "took all knowledge for his province."
Dr. Wallace's "New Shakespeare Discoveries" are really extremely valuable and informing, and very greatly assist the statements which the writer has made in the previous chapters, viz., that the Stratford Householder was a mean Rustic who was totally unable to read or to write, and was not even an actor of repute, but was a mere hanger-on at the Theatre. Indeed, the more these important documents are examined the clearer it will be perceived that, as Dr. Wallace points out, they shew us that the real William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman, was not the "Aristocrat," whom Tolstoi declares the author of the plays to have been, but was in fact a man who resided [occasionally when he happened to revisit London] "in a hardworking family," a man who was familiar with hairdressers and their apprentices, a man who mixed as an equal among tradesmen in a humble position of life, who referred to him as "One Shakespeare." These documents prove that "One Shakespeare" was not and could not have been the "poet and dramatist." In a word these documents strongly confirm the fact that
BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.
[Illustration: Plate XLI. Facsimile of the Dedication of Powell's "Attourney's Academy," 1630]
CHAPTER XV. — APPENDIX.
The facsimile shewn in Plate 41, Page 176, is from "The Attourney's Academy," 1630. The reader will perceive that the ornamental heading is printed upside down. In the ordinary copies it is not so printed, but only in special copies such as that possessed by the writer; the object of the upside-down printing being, as we have already pointed out in previous pages, to reveal, to those deemed worthy of receiving it, some secret concerning Bacon.
In the present work, while we have used our utmost endeavour to place in the vacant frame, the true portrait of him who was the wonder and mystery of his own age and indeed of all ages, we have never failed to remember the instructions given to us in "King Lear":—
"Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest."