Francis Bacon Research Trust

The Great Instauration, Part IV

The Ladder of the Intellect

Engraved title-page to William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, published in 1623, printed in London by Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount. The engraving was made by Martin Droeshout.

The portrait, even though carefully executed by Droeshout, has a certain strangeness about it which immediately catches one’s attention. For instance, the face is remarkably expressionless, and the head seems to be a little too large and to float above the rest of the body rather than sitting firmly on the shoulders. In fact the general effect is of a mask rather than the living face of a person, which supposition is supported by Ben Jonson’s accompanying verse:-

To the Reader.

This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Graver had a strife
with Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he but have drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in brasse.
But since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

In this verse Jonson states that the engraver strove with Nature to ‘out-do the life’. Taking the word out-do in its more common meaning as surpass or excel, the passage is unintelligible, for no graver can do more than imitate and represent the life of his subject: no one can surpass it. In its literal meaning, however, out-do (as in the equivalent Dutch word uitdoen) means to erase or efface; hence Jonson seems to be telling us that the engraver tried very hard to do out or do away with the life or reality of Shakespeare—a comment which the rather lifeless face of the portrait seems to confirm. But why go to so much trouble to create and then print a picture which is admittedly and on purpose lifeless? This is the very opposite of what is normally done and expected to be done.

Another word in the verse that has a double-meaning, and which is used with both meanings, is hit. Besides meaning struck, the word hit also means hidden, concealed. It was often used as an alternative spelling for ‘hid’ in Elizabethan writings. Taken in this sense, it matches well and further explains the meaning of the first four lines, which is that the artist worked hard to erase the life in the face of the portrait with the purpose of hiding the author’s face.

As for the doublet, not only is it drawn flat as if it were a card cut-out, but also it shows a view of two left shoulders—a front and a back—deliberately drawn as such. This marked emphasis on the left-hand aspect of Shakespeare gives added weight to the mask which covers or is in place of the author’s face, for the ‘left’ is traditionally associated with cryptography and Cabala.

Cabala (sometimes spelt Kabbalah or Qabbala), meaning ‘the Received Wisdom’, is basically comprised of the secret teachings of Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, with additions from other prophets and masters down the ages, both before and since Moses. It is designed to lead people to enlightenment through the progressive discovery (or uncovering) of the truth, and employs many cryptic methods such as numerological cipher and word substitution, as well as allegory and symbolism, and various levels of veiling, to aid in this process.

The left-hand side is known as the dark side, associated with night and the moon, and hence with the mind and all things secret or veiled. Since the mind is illumined by and reflects the wisdom of the heart, as the moon reflects the light of the sun, so the knowledge which the mind acquires in this way is the cabala or received wisdom.

As an apt illustration of the use of this symbolism, there was a cabalistic cipher method adopted in Italy in 1621, known as the Latin Cabala, which was said to have been established on the occasion of the left arm of the blessed Conrad (a famous hermit of his time) being brought with ceremony from Netina to Piacenza. (Recorded in Anathemata B. Conrado, issued at Placentia in 1621). This cipher substitutes numbers for letters in a simple format (A = 1, B = 2, etc.), just as suggested by the initial sentence of the address to the great Variety of Readers in the Shakespeare Folio:-

From the most able, to him that can but spell: There you are number’d.

Heminge and Condell, Address to the Readers, Shakespeare Folio, 1623.

Emphasising the left arm in such a blatant yet clever way is a clear indication that the picture is ‘left-handed’ or cryptic, and cabalistic in nature.

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