-52-
So the early Baconian researchers looked into this further to see if there were additional such correspondences. They found more associations in the, just mentioned, 1640 edition of Bacon’s OF THE ADVANCEMENT AND PROFICIENCIE OF LEARNING, supposedly interpreted by Gilbert Wats. [Hereafter called the Advancement].
Among their
findings was that in this same play in the First Folio, page 52 of the
Histories is actually mispaged since it should be page 50 because pages 47
and 48 are missing. They found that in the 1640 Advancement page 52
is also a mispage for a missing page 50. In the 1640 Advancement
there are two pages 53 and the second page 53 should actually be page 55. In
the First Folio play there is a similar confusion of pages, but by a different
mechanism and a reversed result. In the Advancement where page 55 was
marked as page 53, in the play it was page 53 that was wrongly marked as page
55.
To sum, we
have:
“Advancement”
1640 -------- page 50 mispaged
as 52.1st Part King Henry IV -------- page 50 mispaged as 52.
“Advancement” 1640 -------- page 55 mispaged as 53.
1st Part King Henry IV -------- page 53 mispaged as 55.
Then on this
second page 53 in the Advancement
(actually page 55) is one of only three pages (out of 477) with Bacon’s name in
the margin, and the only one that has his name capitalized. The other
two pages are 122 and 123. Please note that there is no argument that
mispaginations themselves were uncommon and that therefore these are rare. We
know that they were common.
But that does
not mean that they could not also sometimes be intentional. An example
mentioned by William T. Smedley in his The Mystery of Francis Bacon is
that in the 1605 first edition of Bacon’s The tvvoo bookes of Francis Bacon.
Of the proficience and aduancement of learning, diuine and humane that the
45 leaves of the first book are all correctly numbered. But in the second book
there are many unimaginable mispaginations with one sequence being: “70, 70,
71, 70, 72, 74, 73, 74, 75, 69, 77, 74, 74, 69, 69, 82, 87, 79, 89, 91, 92, 93,
94, 95, 99, 97, 99, 102, 103, 103, 93, 106 and on correctly until the last
page, 118, except that 115 is numbered 105.” Smedley comments “It is impossible
to attribute this mispagination to the printer’s carelessness. This was the
first work published bearing Bacon’s name, excepting the trifle of essays
published in 1597. There does not appear to have been any hurry in its
production. It is quite a small volume, and yet the foregoing remarkable mispaginations
occur. There must be some purpose in this which has yet to be found out.”
Paying
attention to column numbers also yields similar associations. In the First
Folio Comedies the second column on page 53 is column 106 and it has the word
“Bacon” on it. In the Histories on both columns 106 and 107 (the pages being
wrongly labeled as 55 and 56, when they should be pages 53 and 54 since pages
47 and 48 are missing) we find the name “Francis”. Then returning to the
1640 Advancement on pages 106 and 107
we find “Drama”
and “Stage-plaies”
mentioned, and these are the only pages in that book that were found to discuss
them.
One other
thing to keep in mind as we continue is something Shake-speare himself had one
of his characters say.
In a short
scene, not relevant to the plot, on page 89 of The life of Henry the Fifth, the character Fluellen is comparing
the lives of King Henry and Alexander the Great. In justifying his analogies he
says:
And then in the next paragraph:
http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=firstfolio&PagePosition=442
This is not
much different than what Bacon came close to saying in the 1640 Advancement of Learning. On page 259
(the Kay value for ‘Shakespeare’) while writing how other cultures (like China
and Egypt) have developed systems of writing that didn’t depend on Letters or
Words, but rather used Characters or Figures which convey meaning by
‘Congruitie’.
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