counting all the lines without exception, including as before the head-line titles. Observe, that it is only made possible for us to read "hang'd hog," because by the printer's "error" hanging is divided improperly as han-ging instead of hang-ing. This apparent misprint is a most careful arrangement made by the great author himself.
I must once again repeat that there are no misprints or errors in the First Folio, 1623, because the great author was alive, and most carefully arranged every column in every page, and every word in every column, so that we should find every word exactly where we do find such particular word. Hang'd hog is, therefore, clearly the signature of the great author upon the first page of the Folio, just as 993 is his signature upon the last page of the Folio. But, as I have already said, in order to obtain a full, certain and complete revelation we must discover a third example. This we shall find in the second column of
The First Page 43. (Example 3.)
wherein is the first scene of the second act of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," where we read as follows:—
Mis. Page. What's the matter, woman?
Mi. Ford. O woman: if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour.
Mi. Page. Hang the trifle (woman) take the honour.
Here, reading the initial letters of each line upwards from "Hang," we get quite clearly S. O. W., and we perceive that "Hang sow" is just as much Bacon as is Hang hog. Thus, we get a triplet of No. 43, as we had a triplet of page 53, but we should also realise that we get a third triplet, because we find
Hang HOG (Example 1.)
on page one in the Comedies, the first portion of the plays, and we find