| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
The Peculiar Portrait in the First Folio
[Droeshout Engraving]
"The tunic, coat, or whatever the garment may have been called at the time, is so strangely illustrated that
the right hand-side of the forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the backpart, and so give[s] a harlequin
appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume was intentional and done with express object and
purpose" (Gentlemen's Tailor Magazine April 1911)
"It will be seen that the eyes are both drawn as right eyes instead of the normal right and left. This was
discovered some years ago by Lord Brian, the eminent Harley Street Neurologist, who pointed out that the angle
made by the lids of an eye where they meet nearest the nose is less acute than the angle at the inner half of the
upper lid itself is narrower than the outer half.
The nose is out of alignment, as the middle of the upper lip is under one nostril"
"It was about the time of the appearance of "Venus and Adonis," the close of that mythical period during
which, according to the biographers, Shakespeare had completed his marvelous education, that Robert Greene
penned this, our only verbal portraiture of him:
"A face like Thersites; [in mythology, an ugly, foul-tounged fellow] his eyes broad and tawney; his hair
harsh and curled like a horse's mane -- his lips were the largest size in folio -- the only good part that he had to
grace his visage was his nose, and that was conqueror-like, as beaked as an eagle." [from James Phinney Baxter,
The Greatest of Literary Problems, 1915]
| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
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