Francis Bacon on Page 1 of The Tempest

 

This is an update on an old post.

Line number 33 of the first page of The Tempest in Shakespeare's First Folio contains the following acrostic: "(Francis Bacon), hang'd hog is he." The number 33 corresponds with the gematria value of the letters in BACON.

 

 

The usual interpretation of Gonzalo's lines is is that he is invoking an old English proverb—"He that is born to be hanged will never be drowned." However, the phrase "hang-hog is Latin for bacon" is a famous pun that appears in Act 4, Scene 1 of the comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Gonzalo is essentially predicting what the Boatswain's ultimate fate or destiny will be, that is he is to die by being hanged from a gallows on land. The Latin word for "destiny, fate, lot" is fātum ("a prophetic declaration, oracle, prediction; that which is ordained, destiny, fate").  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fatum#Latin; https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=fatum.  If the Latin word fātum can be read as wordplay on the English word "fat," then the Latin word lardum (meaning "bacon fat, lard") might be the goal of the wordplay, which would create another hint pointing to the name Francis Bacon.

The acrostic shown above is also reminiscent of a story in Francis Bacon's Apothegms, first published in 1650, about Francis’ father, Sir Nicholas Bacon:

“A culprit on trial for his life before the Judge, Sir Nicholas Bacon, desired
his mercy on account of kinship. ‘Prithee’ said my Lord Judge, ‘how comes
that in?’ ‘Why, if it please you, my Lord, your name is Bacon and mine Hog,
and in all ages Hog and Bacon have been so near kindred that they are not to
be separated.’ ‘Ay but,’ replied Sir Nicholas, ‘you and I cannot be kindred 
except you be hanged, for Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged.’”

Gonzalo's statement is also reminiscent of a longstanding sailors' superstition.  Sailors in the 18th through the early 20th centuries often had a rooster tattooed on one foot and a pig tattooed on the other foot. https://www.tattoodo.com/articles/a-maritime-classic-the-pig-and-rooster-tattoo-5023 The reasoning was that pigs and chickens are not destined to die at sea.  How this association arose is a little murky, but some believe that pigs and chickens were kept in wooden crates on deck of a ship and the sailors noticed that the wooden crates tended to float, allowing the pigs and chickens to survive a shipwreck even though they could not swim.  Unfortunately, there is no record of this superstition going as far back as the Elizabethan era, but sailors have a long tradition of superstition.  Could this superstition have been known but otherwise unrecorded, or is the relationship of Gonzalo's statement to the later tradition merely coincidental?

Finally, mentioning a pig has a history of being bad luck on a ship, but again it is unclear when this superstition began.  https://harborfish.com/the-curly-tailed-fella-and-other-seafaring-superstitions/  If it was known in Shakespeare's time maybe that is why the name Bacon is hidden on the first page of The Tempest (the ship at storm scene) and only alluded to with "hang'd hog is he." In a sense, it would be "bad luck" for the passengers and crew if Gonzalo were to mention a hog or bacon explicitly when the ship is in the middle of a tempest in danger of being shipwrecked.

See also: The hidden bard of Love's Labour's Lost