Next, look on Plate 29, Page 119, which is the picture on the right of the title page. Here you see that the same Shake-spear whom we saw in the left-hand picture is now riding on a courser. That he is the same man is shewn by the sprig of bay in his hat, but he is no longer a Shake-spear, he is a Shake-_spur_. Note how much the artist has emphasised the drawing of the spur. It is made the one prominent thing in the whole picture. We refer our reader to "The Returne from Pernassus" (see pp. 47-48) where he will read,
"England affordes those glorious vagabonds That carried earst their fardels on their backes Coursers to ride on through the gazing streetes."
Now glance at the top picture on the title page (see Plate 27, Page 115,) which is enlarged in Plate 30, Page 122. Note that the picture is enclosed in the magic circle of the imagination, surrounded by the masks of Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce (in the same way as Stothard's picture of the "Merry Wives of Windsor," Plate 32, Page 127).
[Illustration: Plate XXXII. Scene from "The Merry Wives of Windsor," painted by Thomas Stothard.]
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."