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his is an introduction to an ingenious and creative cipher system to be found in the works of William Shakespeare.Here it is necessary to explain that cryptography is a very old technique. Even in antiquity the rule was, whenever the name of a place or person must be repeated in a message, it must always be misspelled. Therefore Bacon's name is never spelled correctly, and there are many alternate forms, but see the 25 letter solution to the dedication of the 1623 Folio which includes "BEKAANBACON" adjoining. Sometimes the name is preceded by "F" or "FS," as he abbreviated his first name in his signature. Bacon was himself a cryptographer, if not a cryptanalyst as his brother Anthony was.Proofs by cryptanalysis, such as are shown here, do not depend upon comparing styles, or vocabulary counts, or literary opinions. If a cipher be found in such ancient works, and the name of the author is included, proof of authorship must be regarded as conclusive.
The "probable word" attack is most useful in breaking a monoalphabetic cipher. A cryptanalyst, suspecting that the name "Bacon" might appear in the plaintext, can use that as a useful tool to solve a cipher. Thus, misspelling of this name, and in as many ways as possible, must be done in order to attempt to defeat a solution.
Bacon's ciphers were steganographic, that is they were designed to be concealed. One artifice was to hide the signifigant letters in the capital letters of a verse or text. This type of cipher is called acrostic and it was a popular method in his day. It may be complicated by substitution.
A substitution cipher is a very simple device. Substitute the letter B for the letter A, substitute C for B, substitue D for C and so on. It may be complicated by a key whereby the alphabet is reversed or scrambled, or altered in some other way. And the substitution may be more extreme such as G for A, H for B, I for C, etc. Bacon's way was not so simple.
Bacon explains, by the use of the "Dyers's Hand" metaphor in Sonnet 111, why his name (except for one instance) is always misspelled, but it still belongs to him.
All of which brings us to a short article about Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, and many examples of the name of the author hidden in the ciphertext.
Penn Leary, July 1, 1995
Are there Ciphers in Shakespeare?
Copyright 1993 By Penn Leary
t is considered by some (yet certainly not by all) academicians that it is a lunacy to question the authorship of the Works of William Shakespeare -- a comical 1984 thought-crime, a preposterous and radical and specious view of the obvious, a conspicuous deviation from a normal and Politically Correct academic opinion.
But Charles Dickens, a student of human nature, had this to say: "The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery, and I tremble every day lest something should turn up."
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "As long as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show. . .The Egyptian verdict of the Shakespeare societies comes to mind that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse." John Greenleaf Whittier said, "Whether Bacon wrote the wonderful plays or not, I am quite sure the man Shakspere neither did nor could."
James M. Barrie put it more whimsically: "I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his lifetime." Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, "Ask your own hearts, ask your own common sense, to conceive the possibility of the author of the Plays being the anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily criticism. What! are we to have miracles in sport? Does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?"
And there yet remains a band of doubters. If someone else wrote the plays and poems, then who?
Let us consult a calendar of years:
|----Publication of the Plays---| 1560 1570 1580 1590| 1600 1610 1620 | 1626 |+|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++| The Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) |+|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|++| Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) --|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++| Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) |+++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|++| William Shaksper, of Stratford (1564-1616) |+++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++| Francis Bacon (1561-1626) |++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++|The 1623 edition of the First Folio contained twenty new plays. At that time Shakespeare had been dead for seven years, Edward De Vere for nineteen and Christopher Marlowe for thirty. Only Francis Bacon survived the 1623 publication.
This is hardly enough to credit the authorship to Bacon, but it arouses skepticism upon the claims of the other three leading contenders.
There is also considerable doubt about the facts of Shakespeare's own life. Let us read what Mark Twain had to say about that (From Is Shakespeare Dead? 1909):
He was born on the 23rd of April, 1564.
Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names.
At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in attesting important documents, because they could not write their names.
Of the first eighteen years of his life nothing is known. They are a blank.
On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Whateley.
Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the banns.
Within six months the first child was born.
About two (blank) years followed, during which period nothing at all happened to Shakespeare, so far as anybody knows.
Then came twins--1585. February.
Two blank years follow.
Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family behind.
Five blank years follow. During this period nothing happened to him, as far as anybody actually knows.
Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor.
Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players.
Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her reign. And remained obscure.
Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then.
In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and manager.
Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the same.
Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest.
Then--1610-11--he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers; and acting as a confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed.
He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated pursuits. . .
When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. It made no more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theatre-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast to what happened when Ben Jonson and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and the other distinguished literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he lifted his.
So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.
So far as anybody knows and can prove he never wrote a letter to anybody in his life.
So far as any one knows, he received only one letter during his life.
So far as anyone can know and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this day. This is it:Good frend for Iesus sake forbeare
to digg the dust encloased heare!
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.Mark Twain (abridged)
From Johnson and Steevens, Plays and Poems of Shakespeare: All that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakespeare is . . . that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, married and had children there . . . went to London where he commenced as an actor, wrote poems and plays . . . returned to Stratford, made his will, died and was buried.
On this, James P. Baxter comments, "This indeed is more than is really known of him."
Richard Bentley, writing in the American Bar Association Journal, ("Elizabethan Whodunit," February, 1959) abridges Francis Bacon's biography:"The facts of Bacon's life are well known. He was born three years before Shaksper (1561) and died ten years after him (1626). Bacon was educated at Cambridge University (1574-6). He then went to Paris in the suite of the English Ambassador. After his return he studied law and was admitted to the Bar at the age of 21 years. He became a Bencher at Gray's Inn. . .
"Bacon came into royal favor with James I. He was knighted almost at once, became Solicitor General (in 1607), Attorney General (in 1613), Lord Keeper of the Great Seal (in 1617) and then (in 1618) Lord Chancellor. Within four years, however, he confessed to a charge of bribery and was imprisoned; but was released after a few days [by order of James I who had required him to confess for political reasons]. Thereafter he devoted himself to literature, writing on jurisprudence, science and philosophy. His education, his breadth of learning, knowledge of law, familiarity with Court circles both abroad and in England, and his unusual literary ability made him the natural choice of those who were convinced the Shakespeare works must have been written by someone possessed of these advantages, and not by Shaksper of Stratford, who apparently had none of them."See the Bentley file.
Oxfordians, seeking the prize for their idol who died nineteen years too soon, complain that Bacon is ineligible. He was too busy, they say, with other things to write The Works.
Bacon became a barrister in 1582, age 21. He had almost no practice and survived by becoming a special counsel to the Queen in 1588. He was a member of Parliament for many years, but the House met very infrequently and attendance was not considered a profession. In 1605, at age 44, he published The Advancement of Learning; before that he had published nothing but a book of Essays and of meditations, a matter of 8000 words. Two years later his public life began when he was made Solicitor General by James I. His twenty-two major works were not printed until 1621 and after.
Bacon was interested in ciphers and invented one of his own that he called the "Biliterarie Cipher." His system anticipated the Binary Scale supposedly invented by Leibniz in 1671. Any two unlike things could be used, such as "a" and "b", "0" and "1", or even signal flags. An extended version is called the ASCII code and is the basis for computer science. He offered this example:In the Advancement of Learning (1623) Bacon had this to say:
"The knowledge of Cyphering, hath drawne on with it a knowledge relative unto it, which is the knowledge of Discyphering, or of Discreting Cyphers, and the Capitulations of secrecy past between the Parties. Certainly it is an Art which requires great paines and a good witt and is (as the other was) consecrate to the Counsels of Princes: yet notwithstanding by diligent prevision it may be made unprofitable, though, as things are, it be of great use. For if good and faithfull Cyphers were invented & practised, many of them would delude and forestall all the Cunning of the Decypherer, which yet are very apt and easie to be read or written: but the rawnesse and unskilfulnesse of Secretaries, and Clarks in the Courts of Princes, is such that many times the greatest matters are Committed to futile and weake Cyphers."
At another place Bacon continues on the same subject:
"For CYPHARS; they are commonly in Letters or Alphabets, but may bee in Wordes. T he kindes of CYPHARS, (besides the SIMPLE CYPHARS with Changes, and intermixtures of NVLLES, and NONSIGNIFICANTS) are many, according to the Nature or Rule of the infoulding:
WHEELE-CYPHARS, KAY-CYPHARS, DOVBLES, &c. But the vertues of them, whereby they are to be preferred, are three; that they be not laborious to write and reade; that they bee impossible to discypher; and in some cases, that they bee without suspition. The highest Degree whereof, is to write OMNIA PER OMNIA; which is vndoubtedly possible, with a proportion Quintuple at most, of the writing infoulding, to the writing infoulded, and no other restrainte whatsoever. This Arte of Cypheringe, hath for Relatiue, an Art of Discypheringe ; by supposition vnprofitable; but, as things are, of great vse. For suppose that Cyphars were well mannaged, there bee Multitudes of them which exclude the Discypherer. But in regarde of the rawnesse and vnskilfulnesse of the handes, through which they passe, the greatest Matters, are many times carryed in the weakest CYPHARS."By ciphers "without suspition," Bacon meant steganography. This may be accomplished by the use of acrostics, whereby the first capitalized letter of each line in a poem may convey the message; the strategy included his own Biliterarie Cipher. Here the very existence of a cipher writing may never be noticed.
For a preview of ciphers in the Works, hit here.
Francis Bacon was not a poet: so say modern critics. Perhaps they are unaware of these quotations collected by Mrs. Henry Pott (Francis Bacon and his Secret Society, Schulte & Co., Chicago 1891):
It is he that filled up all numbers [lines of verse], and performed that which may be compared or preferred to insolent Greece or haughty Rome (Ben Jonson).
Sir Tobie Matthew, writing to his friend Francis Bacon in 1618, states: "The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another."
In the Scourge of Folly, John Davies of Hereford (1565-1618) wrote this epigram:
To the Royall Ingenious and All-learned Knight--
Sr Francis BaconThy bounty and the Beauty of thy Witt
Compris'd in Lists of Law and the learned Arts,
Each making thee for great Imployment fitt,
Which now thou hast, (though short of thy deserts)
Compells my pen to let fall shining Inke
And to bedew the Baies that deck thy Front ;
And to thy health in Helicon to drinke
As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont;
For thou dost her embozom; and dost vse
Her company for sport twixt graue affaires.
So vtter'st Law the liuelyer through the Muse .
And for that all thy Notes are sweetest Aires ;
My Muse thus notes thy worth in ev'ry Line.
With ynke which thus she sugers; so, to shine.Thus John Davies in 1610 states plainly that Francis Bacon was a poet and that he had woven into his works spirited illustrations of the law. John Davies was the same man to whom Bacon had written a letter which concluded, "so desiring you to be good to concealed poets."
Francis Bacon had a great respect and affection for poetry; here are his words:
"Poesy cheereth and refreshes the soule; chanting things rare, and various, and full of vicissitudes. So as Poesy serveth and conferreth to Delectation, Magnaminity, and Morality; and therefore it may seem deservedly to have some Participation of Divinenesse, becauwse it doth raise the mind, and exalt the spirit with high raptures, by proportioning the shewes of things to the desires of the mind; and not submitting the mind to things, as Reason and History doe."
Why might Bacon have concealed his creations? George Puttenham in The Arte of English Poesie (1589) wrote, "I know many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably, and suppressed it agayne, or else suffered it to be publisht without their owne names to it, as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman to seem learned, and to shew himself amorous of any learned Art." In addition, the Plays were written during a very dangerous period. The airing of some political doctrine might offend a royal sensibility, and death or mutilation was the penalty.
In 1591 Greene, in his "Farewell to Folly," sneers at the practice of concealing the authorship of plays under other names. "Others," he says, "if they come to write or publish anything in print, which for their calling and gravity being loth to have any profane pamphlets pass under their hands, get some other to set his name to their verses. And he that cannot write true English without the aid of clerks of parish churches will needs make himself the father of interludes."
What did Bacon's contemporaries think of his poetic talents? Here is a statement made by Edmund Howes in 1615:
"Our moderne, and present excellent poets which worthely florish in their owne workes, and all of them in my owne knowledge lived togeather in this Queenes raigne, according to their priorities as neere as I could, I have orderly set downe (viz) George Gascoigne, Thomas Churchyard, Edward Dyer, Edmond Spencer, Philip Sidney, John Harrington, Thomas Challoner, Frauncis Bacon, John Davie, Iohn Lillie, George Chapman, W. Warner, Willi Shakespeare, Samuell Daniell, Michaell Draiton, Christopher Marlo, Benjamine Johnson, Iohn Marston, Abraham Frauncis, Frauncis Meers, Joshua Siluester, Thomas Deckers, John Flecher, John Webster, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Middleton, George Withers."
Thus did Edmund Howes rank "Frauncis" Bacon with Shakespeare among these twenty-seven contemporary "excellent Poets." He put him six names ahead of "Willi."
Edmust Howes was not alone among Bacon's contemporaries to acknowledge his poetic capability.
John Stowe (1525-1605) collected manuscripts and books. He published and edited many works, particularly The Chronicles. In a 1615 edition he enumerated twenty-four of "Our modern and excellent poets which worthely flourish in their own workes in the Queen's reign". Amongst them he listed:
"Edmond Spencer, Esq.; Sir Philip Sidney, Knight; Sir Francis Bacon, Knight; Maister George Chapman, Gentleman; Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentleman; Michael Draiton, Esquire, and Mr. Benjamin Johnson, Gentleman."
Bacon spoke of himself and was spoken of by others as "a concealed poet." In 1600 Bacon received a visit from Queen Elizabeth at his lodge at Twickenham. "At which time," he says, "I had, though I profess not to be a poet, prepared a sonnet directly tending and alluding to draw on her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord [Essex].
Are there ciphers in Shakespeare's Works? Yes, dear reader, indeed there are. Necessarily, the discussion that follows is not complete because it is very much condensed from my bookThe Second Cryptographic Shakespeare
(Westchester House, 218 So. 95, Omaha NE 68114, $15 ppd.).Let us begin with the 1609 edition of "SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS." Here is a copy of the title-page:
SHAKE-SPEARES And next, on the recto of the second leaf, the mysterious Dedication (all quotes are from facsimiles of the originals):SONNETS.
Neuer before Imprinted.
___________________
___________________AT LONDON
By G. Eld for T.T. and are
to be solde by William Aspley.
1609.
TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF. What were all those periods doing there, stuck in for no befitting reason, after every word? Were they just someone's attempt at decoration, a feeble example of the compositor's art? And why were there four unnecessary spaces between the lines? Why I couldn't guess, except that they had attracted my attention. Could that have been the reason?
THESE.INSVING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.BY.
OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTVRER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.T.T.
A substitution cipher is a very simple device. Substitute the letter B for the letter A, substitute C for B, substitue D for C and so on. It may be complicated by a key whereby the alphabet is reversed or scrambled, or altered in some other way. And the substitution may be more extreme such as G for A, H for B, I for C, etc. Bacon's way was not so simple.
Using the title-page, the Dedication and my computer, I found a message containing 25 letters. The normal Elizabethan 24 letter alphabet (No "J" or "U") had been shortened to 21 letters (No "W, X, or Z"). Bacon's abbreviated key cipher alphabet was found to be this:
A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V Y Here are the ciphertext letters:
S S R D T N Y G D T T M Y A F I O E E R F E G S R Julius Caesar is said to have invented this elementary substitution cipher. Here is the "Caesar cipher" -4 table (using the "FORTH." letter back) for decipherment:
Ciphertext alphabet: E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V Y A B C D
Plaintext alphabet: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V Y
It has been said that the solution to any cryptogram, once found, looks easy. Here is the easy solution:
o o n y p i r c y p p h r s b e k a a n b a c o n The ciphertext letters are selected by using the last letter of each capitalized word (and a capitalized letter standing alone is to be recognized as the last letter of a capitalized word) beginning with SHAKE-SPEARES on the title page and ending with the lower case, superscripted "r" in "Mr." in the Dedication. For the date, "1609", the letters "A F I" are entered because these numbers represent the elementary, numerically corresponding letters of the Elizabethan alphabet (there is no letter equivalent to the number zero).
Using a computer and my Baconian Caesar cipher program, you may enter:
(From Title-page) |Date | (From Dedication)
|1 6 9|
S S R D T N Y G D T T M Y|A F I|O E E R F E G S RThe first four possible plaintext lines of the -4 (fourth letter back) computer readout look like this:
S S R D T N Y G D T T M Y A F I O E E R F E G S R
R R Q C S M V F C S S L V Y E H N D D Q E D F R Q 1
Q Q P B R L T E B R R K T V D G M C C P D C E Q P 2
P P O A Q K S D A Q Q I S T C F L B B O C B D P O 3
O O N Y P I R C Y P P H R S B E K A A N B A C O N 4The solution appears as the fourth numbered line. We notice that the words "CYPPHRS," "BEKAAN" and "BACON" are directly adjoining. Bekaan is a phonetic spelling of Bacon, while Cypphrs identifies this plaintext as having been originally written in cipher.
Here we find another name to ponder with: Nypir or Napier.
"NYPIR" refers to John Napier who found an indispensable use for decimals while he was perfecting the mathematical theory of logarithms. The spelling of his name here should not trouble us. According to the "Handbook" for the 1914 Napier Tercentenary Celebration, ". . .we do not know the correct spelling of Napier's name, since many forms of the word are found, such as Napeir, Nepair, Nepeir, Neper, Napare, Napar, Naipper. Apparently the forms Jhone Neper and Jhone Nepair are the most usual with John Napier; the form Napier is comparatively modern." And, if you haven't already looked, see a great deal more about Mr. Napier.
In Elizabethan England, spelling was still in its infancy; there were no standardized dictionaries. Words were spelt auricularly, as they sounded and one spelling was considered as no better than another.
According to the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, these forms of the word "cipher" were also acceptable in the Seventeenth Century: "sipher, cyfer, cifer, ciphre, sypher, ziphre, scypher, cyphar, cyphre, ciphar, zifer, cypher." Francis Bacon spelled it "ciphras" in Latin.
As to "Bekann" for "Bacon," Francis once wrote his brother's name (in a legal document preserved in the London Lambeth Library) in this way: "Anth. Bakon." Books dedicated to Bacon spelled his first name as "ffrauncis." His kinsmen were not particular about it either:
"It is worthy of notice that the Bacon family in early times spelt their name 'Becon' or 'Beacon.' Some of them seem to have written under this name, and there is a work by Thomas Becon, 1563-4 in which, on the title page of the second volume, his name changes from Becon to Beacon" (Mrs. Henry Pott, Francis Bacon and his Secret Society, p 341).
John Florio (1591, Second Frutes ) once alluded to a "gammon of bakon." The Oxford English Dictionary gives these as valid spellings for the period: "bacoun, bakoun, bacun, bakon, baken, bacon."
Historically, Bacon's ancestors spelt the name in many ways. For example, BACAN, BAKON, BACCEN, BOCCEN, BUCHEN, BACHONE, BAUCAN, BACCOUN, and BEECHEN. For confirmation, see the Bacon genealogy site.
But there is a much better reason for the misspelling of Bacon's name, as it appears in this solution and in many others to be described.The Italians, in the 15th Century, discovered that their wartime ciphers were being broken by the "probable word" method. For some good reason, a guess might be made by the enemy that a letter was addressed to someone in Venice, or contained references to Venice. Then a search could be made in the ciphertext for repetitions of identical six letter groups. When found, these reliable six letter cipher conversions were used to extend the unknown alphabet.
Cipher clerks have always been lectured on cryptographic security. Whenever a place name or personal name appeared more than once in a message it had to be misspelled, and in as many ways as possible. Failure to follow this rule would have disastrous results, as one Lt. Jaeger once found out.
The example is given by David Kahn in The Codebreakers (Macmillan Co., 1967, p 336). During WWI a German Signal officer by the name of Jaeger set out to stiffen code discipline. However his own name was not in the codebook and had to be spelled out in every transmitted order. "This was frequently. Its peculiar formation--the repetition of the high frequency e for example--permitted G.2 A.6 to identify it readily,and this in turn led to important clues concerning the superenciphering Geheimklappe. . .Jaeger was beloved by his adversaries because he kept them up to date with code changes, and it was with genuine regret that they saw his name disappear from the German traffic." Thus any word (a suspected "crib") routinely recurring in cipher messages is an apt key to a solution.
In the Sonnet title-page and Dedication, Bacon's name appears twice more, spelled as "Beakyn" and as "Baikehn," together with "Fs" (his signature abbreviation of his first name), and also "Fra." Space will not permit an exposition of the complete solution; however, following the solution given above, his cipher system afterward consistently used the fourth letter forward , rather than the "FORTH." letter back.
Those who may mock such spellings must consider that the authenticated Shakespeare signatures spell the Bard's name in six different ways, a matter the Shakespearean philologists have chosen to disregard. According to Charles Hamilton, a manuscript expert who says he can read the untidy scrawls (In Search of Shakespeare, Harcourt Brace, 1985),these are the spellings: Shackper, Shakspear, Shakspea, Shackspere, Shakspere, Shakspeare.
The man was baptized as Shaksper , gave bond for marriage as Shagspere , was married as Shaxper and buried as Shakspeare .
John Lyly as he is now known, in four successive editions of Euphues and other works, spelled his name as Lyllie, Lily, Lylly, Lilly, Lilie and Lylie, and never as Lyly.
David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, quotes Giovanni Battista Porta who published, in 1563, a famous cryptographic book, De Furtivis Literarum Notis :
"He urged the use of synonyms in plaintexts, noting that 'It will also make for difficulty in the interpretation if we avoid the repetition of the same word.' Like the Argentis, he suggested deliberate misspellings of plaintext words: 'For it is better for a scribe to be thought ignorant than to pay the penalty for the detection of plans,' he wrote."
Bacon was not so careless as to spell his name always in the same way, as in the hundreds of examples I have located. For another see this.
In connection with Porta, some may have noticed the "double A" printer's ornament on the title page of my own book. This "logo" showed two capital letters "A" in a scroll design, with other decorations such as rabbits, squirrels, archers and birds.
According to W. T. Smedley's The Mystery of Francis Bacon (1910), Porta's 1563 book was reprinted in England by one John Wolfe in 1591. It was falsely dated 1563 as if it was the first edition, and the double A ornament was added at the top of the dedication.
This was the first use of this design. The general form was also printed as a heading in Venus & Adonis, Lucrece, the Sonnets, most of the quartos, in the 1623 edition of Shakespeare's works, and also in some others that Smedley attributes to Bacon. It also appears in Napier's book on logarithms and in another dedicated to Anthony Bacon, Francis' brother. The last use of the "AA" device was in an edition of Bacon's Essays published in 1720.
William F. Friedman was perhaps the most famous cryptanalyst of modern times. During WWII he and a U. S. Army Signal Corps cryptographic team broke the Japanese "PURPLE" cipher in August, 1940. The enemy never afterward materially changed the system. Our admirals often knew the current position of every group of the Japanese battle fleet; the messages were sometimes deciphered before the enemy commanders received them. The advantage gained was enormous.In 1916 Friedman had become interested in cryptography because of his study of certain ciphers claimed to be found in Shakespeare's works. He retired in 1955 and, surprisingly enough, he became an historian of what he considered to be false cipher methods. In 1957 he and his wife Elizebeth (also a cryptanalyst) published The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (Cambridge Univ. Press).
It is worth observing that, before the Second World War, and especially before the Friedmans, the science of cryptography was almost unknown to the universities and to the public. Except for the rare and scattered and concealed professional practitioners, there were hardly any authorities for those interested to consult. Where it was taught, it was taught secretly. Books explaining cryptography were mostly out of print and never had much circulation. The casual reader became aware of the topic through Herbert O. Yardley's book, The American Black Chamber which was published in 1931. The U.S. State Department had closed its own cipher room in 1929. There was really no way for a reader to make a sophisticated judgment of the cipher "systems" which were invented. Very possibly some of the authors of these methods, in their ardor, had no better way to innocently judge their own creations. It is too bad, but many of them actually harmed their cause.
The Friedmans, using wry but cheerful humor, took aim at the Baconian crypto-cryptologists and sank their frail, poorly armed, mostly 19th century vessels. The litany of the names of the drowned and the dates of their too-early ventures into combat with the forces of science and mathematics, not to mention the Friedmans, is a grievous sorrow; they sailed forth almost unarmed. To wit: Ignatius Donnelly, 1887; Dr. Orville Owen, 1893; William Stone Booth, 1909; Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence, 1910; Walter Arensberg, 1921; Frank and Parker Woodward, 1923; Elizabeth Wells Gallup, 1899; Mrs. Henry Pott, 1891. Their bones, already bleached, were exhumed, sorted, categorized, mounted, and illuminated by the Friedmans in their entertaining treatise.
As had been mentioned, Francis Bacon preferred steganographic ciphers in which the occurrence of a hidden name would not be noticed. What better way to conceal that name than within one word? And where should that word be placed so as to be most preeminent?
The name of the real author of the First Folio of Shakespeare's Plays is concealed in the first spoken word. It stands alone as the first word of dialogue on the first page of the first printing of the first play in the First Folio, the 1623 first edition of Shakespeare's collected Comedies Histories and Tragedies. It is a solitary word distinguished by its primal detachment. A cipher method based upon whole words, rather than designated letters, presents itself.
"The Tempest," as recorded in the First Folio, is the sole authority for the language and printing of that fanciful drama. The first word of dialogue in "The Tempest" is BOte-swaine. The first letter, "B", is a great capital, the kind of large ornamental initial that heads the first page of almost all of the plays. The script, after some "scene setting" instructions which are printed in italics, gives the "Master" the first word to speak:
To apply the Caesar decryption here we must remember that the letter "W" is not included in our key alphabet but it was often typeset as "VV" in the Folio and in the Sonnets. We shall install "BOTESVVAIN" as the ciphertext and run our computer program:
B O T E S V V A I N E
C P V F T Y Y B K O F 1
D Q Y G V A A C L P G 2
E R A H Y B B D M Q H 3
F S B I A C C E N R I 4The plaintext, then, is "F S B I A C C E N R I". It appears on the "FORTH." (+4) line in which "A" = "e". Bacon's 21 letter alphabet, ending in "T V Y", remains the same. "FS" is Bacon's own abbreviation of his first name while "BIACCEN" is yet another phonetic spelling of his surname.
We will recall that one of Bacon's titles was Viscount St. Albans. FS was how he often signed his name under that title:
The word BOTE-SWAINE deserves notice, not only because it is the first word of dialogue in a book of about 900,000 words, but because of the mathematical probability of the occurrence of these 10 letters while using a 24 letter Elizabethan alphabet. 
What is the importance of Bote-swaine?Before the Master speaks, we must recall what is going on:
A tempestuous noise of Thunder and Lightning heard: So the Master is not just speaking. When the theater lights go down and the curtain rises, he is shouting to be heard above the tumult:"BOTE-SWAINE," with a great, ornamental Capital B!
At the opening of The Tempest the first word that the audience hears is the name of the author. (See a discussion of BOTE-SWAINE.)
Two different versions were typeset and printed as the first page of "The Tempest" in the First Folio. In both of them "Bote-swaine" appears as the first word, but something noteworthy happened to one of the initial great capital "B"s (preceding "ote-swaine") on at least one of this play's journeys to the press. It was printed upside down .We should keep in mind the typographical oddities that adorned the Dedication of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, the decimal points (or periods or full stops, if you will).Like pointers, these signals attracted our attention to that page so as to merit a suspicion that a cipher was concealed in the text. Here again in "The Tempest" such an absurd, capsized great capital "B" deserves the same respect; the use of such signals is confirmed by the discovery that Francis Bacon's ciphered name is to be found, and is entirely contained, within that word "Bote-swaine." It is the word that begins with this freakishly printed letter "B".
We shall next be dealing with acrostic ciphers; here is an example from the Friedman's book:"We have already remarked that acrostics were popular in Elizabethan literature; it should also be stressed that spelling in those days was erratic. Sir John Salusbury, who was as devoted to acrostics as he was to a lady called Dorothy Halsall, enfolded her name in poem after poem [citing Bryn Mawr College Monographs, vol. XIV, 1913]. One of them, with comments by Col. Friedman, runs (with critical letters shown in italics):
Tormented heart in thrall, Yea thrall to love,
Respecting will, Heart-breaking gaine doth grow,
Ever DOLOBELIA, Time will so proue,
Binding distresse, O gem wilt thou allowe,
This fortune my will Repose-lesse of ease,
Vnlesse thou LEDA, Over-spread my heart,
Cutting all my ruth, dayne Disdaine to cease,
I yield to fate, and welcome endles Smart."This, with occasional irregularities, conceals the name CUTBERT (Dorothy's husband) reading the initial letters upwards from the seventh line, and the two parts of the name DOROTHY HALSALL as the letters on either side of the break in the middle of each line; the initials I.S. (for Iohn Salusbury) appear as the first letter of the first word and the first letter of the last word in the final line--In all, Salusbury uses six different versions of his own name in various acrostic signatures; spells the name Francis as Fransis wherever it suits him; regards I and IE as interchangeable with Y; and replaces J's with I's or I's with J's according to whim."
Thus Friedman does not insist upon accurate name spelling and permits "occasional irregularities." The cipher does not read from top to bottom; it is reversed and the plaintext travels from bottom to top. Here, he writes,
"is one of a number of instances which could be cited; but what makes it true that they, and the others, are genuine cases of cryptography is that the validity of the deciphered text and the inflexibility of the systems employed are obvious. . .In each case, there is no room to doubt that they were put there by the deliberate intent of the author; the length of the hidden text, and the absolutely rigid order in which the letters appear, combine to make it enormously improbable that they just happened to be there by accident."
Friedman may not have known that Shakespeare's "Phoenix and the Turtle" was dedicated to John Salusbury.
Bacon frequently sent his friend Toby Matthew manuscripts to criticize. James P. Baxter reports on the mail: Bacon to Mathew, 1608, alluding to the "Felicity of Elizabeth" [Bacon's tribute to the Queen] which he had submitted to him: "At that time methought you were more willing to hear Julius Caesar than Elizabeth commended"; and again Matthew in a letter to Bacon respecting some work he had received from him, "I will not return you weight for weight but Measure for Measure."Had these allusions to Julius Caesar and Measure for Measure been found in correspondence between Shakespeare and a literary friend, would it not have been blown world-wide as proof unquestionable that the actor was the author of these plays?
Schopenhauer is reported to have said: "Every new discovery passes through three stages; first it will be greeted with ridicule, then it will be opposed, and finally it will be accepted as obvious."In 1996 I was asked to write a paper for "Cryptologia," a highly regarded journal of Cryptography and cryptanalysis. This was A History of Cryptography in the 16th and 17th Centuries
Who Wrote the Works is continued in the next section
![[from
Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum]](GIFS/BILIT.GIF)
