-85-
50) Continued
Now, what is interesting is what
Baconians had found some time ago in Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna or A Garden of Heroical Deuises, furnished, and
adorned with Emblemes and Impresas of sundry natures. London, 1612. Of
special interest to Baconians is that this book contains another image of a
“speare, Grip’t in an Armed hand, himself behind, Was left unseen, save to the
eye of mind”. And this image (a hint of an authorial signature?) happens to be
numbered ‘33’ and it is adjacent to an emblem in honor of Sir Francis Bacon:
Note also that the two page numbers added together equal ’67’, the simple count for ‘Francis’. Cheney further notes that Achilles’ spear had the power to heal as well as to wound and that Achilles himself can symbolize disguised authorship, since Ovid presents him as such. He quotes 2 Henry VI 5.1.100:
Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer’s staff
And not to grace an aweful princely scepter.
That gold must round engirt these brows of mine,
Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles’ spear,
Is able with the change to kill and cure.
Here is a hand to hold a scepter up.
He adds “… a second Shakespearean use
of Achilles’ spear as an instrument of both wounding and curing”. This is from Edward III “…in a scene that scholars
now attribute to Shakespeare”:
The poets write, that great Achilles’
spear Could heal the wound it made: the moral is,
What mighty men misdo they can amend.
So, in the emblem for Bacon is shown
this healing power taken directly from that which wounds, (and specifically,
that which wounds the “Sheepheard Swaine” or ‘poet’), in this case, a viper.
But the passage refers to laws that can either bite or heal, or prevent harm.
So this seems to be a reference to Bacon’s desire to revise old statutes that may
do more harm than good. The bi-fold power of Achilles’ spear here BOTH
connected to Bacon and his cipher codes would not easily be a coincidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment