"He hath _hit_ his face"
It is thought that _hit_ means _hid_ as in Chaucer's Squiere's Tale,
line 512 etc.
"Right as a serpent _hit_ him under floures
Til he may seen his tyme for to byte"
If indeed "hit" be intended to be read as "hid" then these ten lines are
no longer the cryptic puzzle which they have hitherto been considered to
be, but in conjunction with the portrait, they clearly reveal the true
facts, that the real author is writing left-handedly, that means
secretly, in shadow, with his face hidden behind a mask or pseudonym.
We should also notice "out-doo" is spelled with a hyphen. In the
language of to-day and still more in that of the time of Shakespeare
all, or nearly all, words beginning with _out_ may be read reversed,
out-bar is bar out, out-bud is bud out, out-crop is crop out, out-fit is
fit out, and so on through the alphabet.
If therefore we may read "out-doo the life" as "doo out the life"
meaning "shut out the real face of the living man" we perceive that here
also we are told "that the real face is hidden."
The description, with the head line "To the Reader" and the signature
"B.
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