I HAVE shewn on pp. 6 to 9 that the title page of the 1623 Folio of the Plays known as Shakespeare's is adorned with a supposed portrait of Shakespeare, which is, in fact, a putty-faced mask supported on a stuffed dummy wearing a coat with two left arms, to inform us that the Stratford clown was a "left-hand," a "dummy," a "pseudonym," behind which the great Author was securely concealed.
This fact disposes once and for all of the Shakespeare myth, and I will now proceed to prove by a few contemporary evidences that the real author was Francis Bacon.
I place before the reader on page 11 a photographically enlarged copy of the engraved title page of Bacon's work, the De Augmentis, which was published in Holland in 1645. "De Augmentis" is the Latin name for the work which appeared in English as the Advancement of Learning.
This same engraved title page was for more than one hundred years used for the title page of Vol. I. of various editions of Bacon's collected works in Latin, which were printed abroad. The same subject, but entirely redrawn, was also employed for other foreign editions of the De Augmentis, but nothing in any way resembling it was printed in England until quite recently, when photo-facsimile copies were made of it for the purpose of discussing the authorship of the "Shakespeare" plays. In this title page we see in the foreground on the right of the picture (the reader's left) Bacon seated with his right hand in brightest light resting upon an open book beneath which is a second book (shall we venture to say that these are the De Augmentis and the Novum Organum?), while with his left-hand in deepest shadow, Bacon is putting forward a mean man, who appears to the careless observer to be running away with a third book. Let us examine carefully this man. We shall then perceive that he is clothed in a goat skin. The word tragedy is derived from the Greek word tragodos, which means an actor dressed in a goat skin. We should also notice that the man wears a false breast to enable him to represent a woman; there were no women actors at the time of Shakespeare's plays. The man, therefore, is intended to represent the tragic muse. With his left hand, and with his left hand only, he grips strongly a clasped sealed, concealed book, which by the crossed lines upon its side (then, as now, the symbol of a mirror) is shewn to be the "Mirror up to Nature," the "Book of the Immortal Plays," known to us under the name of Shakespeare, which, together with Bacon's De Augmentis and his Novum Organum, makes up the "Great Instauration," by which Bacon has "procured the good of all men."
[Original]
Having very carefully considered this plate of the title page of the De Augmentis, 1645, let us next examine the plate on page 13, which is the title page that forms the frontispiece of Bacon's Henry VII. in the Latin edition, printed in Holland in 1642. This forms, with the 1645 edition of the De Augmentis, one of the series of Bacon's collected works which were continually reprinted for upwards of a hundred years. In this title page of Henry VII. we see the same "left-handed" story most emphatically repeated. On the right of the engraving—the reader's left—upon the higher level, Francis Bacon stands in the garb of a philosopher with grand Rosicrucian rosettes upon his shoes. By his side is a knight in full armour, who, like himself, touches the figure with his right hand. On the "left" side of the picture upon the lower level we see that the same Francis Bacon, who is now wearing actor's boots, is stopping the wheel with the shaft of a spear which, the "left-handed" actor grasps (or shall we say "shakes"), while with his "left hand" he points to the globe. This actor wears one spur only, and that upon his "left" boot, and his sword is also girded upon him "left-handedly." Above this "left-handed" actor's head, upon the wheel which the figure is turning with her "left" hand, we see the emblems of the plays; the mirror up to nature (observe the crossed lines to which we called attention in reference to the crossed lines upon the book in the title page of the De Augmentis, 1645)—the rod for the back of fools—"the bason that receives your guilty blood" (see Titus Andronicus v. 2) which is here the symbol for tragedy,—and the fool's rattle or bauble. That the man is not a knight, but is intended to represent an actor, is manifest from his wearing actor's boots, a collar of lace, and leggings trimmed with lace, and having his sword girded on the wrong side, while he wears but one gauntlet and that upon his "left" hand. That he is a Shake-speare actor is also evident because he is shaking the spear which is held by Bacon. He is likewise a shake-spur actor, as is shewn by his wearing one spur only, which is upon his "left" boot. In other emblematic writings and pictures we similarly get "Shake-spur," meaning "Shake-speare."
The reader cannot fail to remark how perpetually it is shewn that everything connected with the plays is performed "left-handedly," that is, "underhandedly" and "secretly in shadow." On the right-hand side upon the higher level the figure with her right hand holds above Bacon's head a salt box. This is in order to teach us that Bacon was the "wisest of mankind," because we are plainly told in the "Continuation of Bacon's New Atlantis" (which was published in 1660, but of which the author who is called "R. H., Esq.," has never been identified) that in "our Heraldry" (which refers to the symbolic drawings that appear mostly as the frontispieces of certain books such as those before the reader) "If for wisdom she (the virgin) holds a salt." But the reader will perceive that in her right hand she also holds something else above Bacon's head.