Chapter 14

"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.

Bacon is putting forward what we described as a "figure"; it is a "man" with false breasts to represent a woman (women were not permitted to act in Bacon's time), and the man is clothed in a goat skin. Tragedos was the Greek word for a goat skin, and Tragedies were so called because the actors were dressed in goat skins. This figure therefore represents the Tragic Muse. Here in the book called _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, which formed one part of the Great Instauration, is placed an engraving to show that another part of the Great Instauration known as Shakespeare's Plays was issued LEFT-HANDEDLY, that is, was issued under the name of a mean actor, the actor Shakespeare. This title page is very revealing, and should be taken in conjunction with the title page of the Cryptographic book which under the name of Gustavus Silenus, "_Homo lunae_," the "Man in the Moon," was published in 1624 in order to form a key to certain cyphers in the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare's Plays.

These two title pages were prepared with consummate skill in order to reveal to the world, when the time was ripe, that

BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.