-87-
51)
Signature moment 2, Part 2
Prof. Cheney
in his Shakespeare's Literary Authorship included a similar reference
again involving Achilles. On page 48 he provides this quote from Homer, Book
22: “Achilleus was shaking / in his
right hand’ the pointed spear .. “
And we know
that the name of Shakespeare itself means “a spearman.”
So we can see
the mispage 993 signaling an authorial sign-off by an allusion to a battle of
spearmen who brandish and hurl their spears. It may even represent a kind of
motto for Bacon’s hidden literary efforts. Except that poets and playwrights
who battle with their writings and wits reminds us that we need to think in terms
of pens as Ben Jonson did, saying of Shakespeare:
“In his well
turned, and true filed lines;
In each of
which, he seems to Shake a Lance,
As brandish’t
at the eyes of ignorance.”
And
Shakespeare, too, identified pens with lances or speares:
Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet and a point of war?
Henry IV Part II, 4.1
Bacon certainly knew these concepts and metaphors, but he and his
close friends would only allude to them in Latin. Here are a couple examples.
The first is from Bacon’s Latin essay “De Vindicta (Of Revenge)”.
And the following is from his Latin essay “De Astutia” (Of
Cunning)”:
Both of the above are from Francis
Bacon's Cryptic Rhymes and the Truth They Reveal, By Edwin Bormann, 1906. Other
translations than his are possible but the argument is that Bacon’s close
literary friends would know which wording was intended.
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