Mr. Sidney Lee is aware of the fact that Martin Droeshout was only
fifteen years old when the Stratford actor died. But it is possible that
he may not know that (in addition to the Shakespeare Mask which
Droeshout drew for the frontispiece of the 1623 folio edition of the
Plays of Shakespeare, in order to reveal, to those who were able to
understand, the true facts of the Authorship of those plays), Martin
Droeshout also drew frontispieces for other books, which may be
similarly correctly characterised as cunningly composed, in order to
reveal the true facts of the authorship of such works, unto those who
were capable of grasping the hidden meaning of his engravings.
One other point it is worth while referring to. The question is
frequently asked, if Bacon wrote under the name of Shakespeare, why so
carefully conceal the fact? An answer is readily supplied by a little
anecdote related by Ben Jonson, which was printed by the Shakespeare
Society in 1842, in their "Notes of Ben Jonson's conversations with
William Drummond of Hawthornden".
"He [Ben Jonson] was dilated by Sir James Murray to the King, for
writting something against the Scots, in a play Eastward Hoe, and
voluntarly imprissonned himself with Chapman and Marston who had written
it amongst them.
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