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.
[Illustration: Plate XXXIII. Facsimile Title Page.]
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.
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