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26) Next we have some more mispaginations. This time
in the Tragedies. The play Hamlet begins on page 152 and this is
followed by the pages 153, 154, 155, and 156. At the bottom of the second
column of page 156 the play depicts the characters Hamlet, Horatio, and
Marcellus discussing the time and realizing that midnight has struck. The character
Horatio says:
“Indeed I
heard it not; then it drawes neere the season,
Wherein the
Spirit held his wont to walke.”
Then the
next page should be 157, but it’s missing. It’s mispaged as 257. There are
a couple interesting things about this. First is the obvious difference of 100
(“Francis Bacon” in the Simple count) counted between 157 and 257. Then the
number 157, as already mentioned, is the Simple Cipher count of “Fra
Rosiecross” whose Kay count is 287, providing some additional support for the
symbolic name. The suspicion here is that the missing page 157 replaced with
257 is meant to attract attention to these numbers. Then there is the
appearance on this next page of 157/257 of the Ghost or Spirit, a being usually
unseen, resembling an unseen playwright possibly.
As mentioned
in section 8 when discussing the concealed “wit”, this idea of a hidden entity
is also hinted at in the play The Comedie of Errors. In the last scene
of this play, on page 99 at the bottom of the first column where the two
Dromios are finally being revealed as twins. We have:
Duke. One of these men is genius to the other:
And so of
these, which is the naturall man,And which the spirit? Who deciphers them?
There is the
idea of an immaterial intelligence coupled with a “naturall man”. And when this
entity, this “ghost” or “Spirit” appears in Hamlet, it is meant to be on page
157. This page being missing, and also seen to be a significant number related
to Francis Bacon, could be a clue meant to emphasize the invisible presence of
the author. It’s a repeated structural theme that looks as though the hidden
bard is giving additional hints of his existence to go along with the many
clues to his identity.
Following
this line of thought, when we go to this page 157 that is now numbered 257 we
soon see the stage direction of “Enter
Ghost”. The next line is by Horatio and he says “Looke my Lord, it comes.”
The command to ‘look’ along with ‘it comes’ suggested to me the possibility of
a cipher. And as it happens the very next line by Hamlet has a letter count of
‘33’.
This was also
found by David Ovason in his book Shakespeare’s
Secret Booke, 2010. He found other instances of this number seeming to come
and go with the Ghost’s visits, though he seems to connect the number more to
esoteric philosophy than to a cipher signature for Bacon.
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