Mr. Story writes that Ben Jonson’s Sogliardo, with his unique purchased crest featuring the rampant, headless boar, turns out to be the set-up to a joke that Jonson uses 24 years later to deliver a bigger punch-line with his stage crafting of the Droeshout First Folio engraving.

I already knew a great deal about all the strange features of the engraving before reading Mr. Story’s revelation. I didn’t think that any of the explanations: That the head was too large for the body, that the too-dark line around the face making it appear like he’s wearing a mask and that the too-small body having two opposite sides (a front and a back) sewn together were enough to prove that Jonson knew the truth about the two men sharing a name but only one was the true author. But what Mr. Story said next was enough for me to suddenly admit–by George, I think he’s got it!

It turns out that the punch-line is the shape of the collar. The too large head is actually resting upon a collar that looks very much like a crest/shield and it does indeed look like Mr. Jonson is saying, “Here at last is the head–from that missing purchased crest.” Here is the thinking, real mind behind these immortal works (not the straw man whose name adorns them).

2. The boar was not really Oxford’s heraldic symbol. The figure in his coat of arms was the silver star. But the figure in the crest was the blue boar. And that’s exactly what Sogliardo was talking about, when he asked Puntarvolo, whether he likes his crest (with that boar without head).
I’m sure, that everybody knew about Oxford’s boar, and so the joke was clearly understood. There were definitely not two or more poets, who were noblemen, lived near London (but not in the city) and had a boar in their crest.

3. Carlo translates the meaning of “without head”: it means “without brain”.
One could add, that Sogliardo does it quite obviously and shamelessly.

4. The name “Puntarvolo” is as interesting as “Sogliardo”. It means: I will point.
Point with what?
It’s very easy to add: (I) shake (the) spear – I will point (with the spear).

4. I several times read that the Name “shake-speare” was an allusion to the spearshaking goddess Pallas Athene.
Jonson seemed to think of another kind of “spear-shaker”, i.e. of Saint George, the patron of the knights (and of the Order of the Garter), when he let clown Carlo say that Puntarvolo, when he is mounted (on the horse) looks like the sign of the George.
Of course everybody at one thought of all the pictures of Saint Georg that he knew, and added: Saint George, spearing the dragon.

No, not the dragon, adds Carlo, but in his case he brandishes his sword just at tree ( save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and break his sword as confidently upon the knotty bark, as the other did upon the scales of the beast).