(The following is from an exchange of e-mail with Mr. Terry Ross, fearless defender of Shakespeare's tarnished reputation)

    Mr. Ross is so delighted with finding Bacon's name in Hiawatha that he wrote me a poem in the same meter. No, poetry won't cut it. Here's a quotation I sent him recently and asked him, as a good Stratfordian, to explain it: (Francis Bacon died in 1626, William Shakespeare in 1616 and Oxford in 1604)

Date of last Quarto before Publication of 1623 Folio.	Changes made in the 1623 Folio subsequent to date of last Quarto.
Taming of the Shrew , 1607	1000 new lines added; extensively rewritten; new title.
King Lear , 1608	88 new lines added; 119 lines retouched.
Henry V , 1608	choruses and two new scenes added; text nearly doubled in length; new title.
Troilus & Cressida , 1609	Prologue inserted; new title.
Titus Andronicus , 1611	Entire new scene added.
Hamlet , 1611	Many important omissions and additions.
Richard II , 1615	Correction throughout version based directly on last quarto.
The Merry Wives of Windsor , 1619	1,081 new lines added; one entire new scene; most of the text re-written.
Henry VI, Part 2 , 1619	1,139 new lines added; 2,000 old lines re-touched; version based on last Quarto.
Henry VI, Part 3 , 1619	906 new lines added; a great number of old lines re-touched.
King John , 1622	1,000 new lines added; one entire new scene; most of the dialogue re-written; new title.
Richard III , 1622	193 new lines added; nearly 2,000 re-touched; based on last Quarto.
Othello , 1622	160 new lines added; many alterations of the Quarto text.

   The hypothesis of the commentators, that all this new work on thirteen of the Shakespearean dramas (some of them becoming practically new compositions in the process), was secretly left in manuscript by the reputed author at his death and that was unknown even to the publishers of his writings for a period of seven years subsequent thereto, would not be tolerated under similar circumstances in other fields of criticism for a single moment.

   Indeed, in the case of several of them, the author, if he did, must have left behind him, unpublished, two manuscript copies of each, both being successive improvements on earlier editions, and the less perfect one of the two, in every instance, was printed first.

    Here is Mr. Ross' response:

    I'm not sure what needs to be explained. Your source seems unfamiliar with Elizabethan-Jacobean theatrical and publishing practices. What is described as the "hypothesis" of commentators is not, in fact, something that is believed by Shakespearean scholars. Or would you care to cite me a recent Shakespearean scholar who advances that "hypothesis"?

    This answer might surely get Mr. Ross expelled from a high-school debating society. What has he said? First, nothing needs to be explained. The explanation must be that the practice of publishers was always to print the oldest, worst version of a play first, saving the best for later, that is, for the 1623 Folio; and that was always long after the author (Shakespeare) was dead. Then he says that this "hypothesis" is not believed by Shakespearean scholars, and challenges me to name one that does.

    Well, Mr. Ross surely does. He must believe that Shakespeare left behind him, unpublished, at least two manuscript copies of each play, the second being an improvement on the earlier edition. The less perfect one of the two was invariably printed first. This must have been the Elizabethan practice of publishers.

    Balderdash and fiddlesticks! But the Stratfordians are stuck with this curious anomaly. And six of these listed quarto editions (1619-1622), being revisions of earlier presentations, were published after Shakespeare's death; nevertheless they too were amended for the 1623 Folio. The Oxfordians are burdened with them too. But they both find it handy to just blink it.

    Mr. Ross still hasn't read the 1990 sequel to my book, The Second Cryptographic Shakespeare  which includes 113 additional examples, so he doesn't understand Bacon's use of cues, of signals.

    And how could the author have pointed out his name more plainly than in The Tragedy of Cymbeline  (iii, 3, 59):

And when a Souldier was the Theame, my name
Was not farre off:

Ciphertext is:

A N D V H E N A S O V L D I E R V A S T H E T H
E A M E M Y N A M E V A S N O T F A R R E O F F

Ciphertext reversed is:

F F O E R R A F T O N S A V E M A N Y M E M A E
H T E H T S A V R E I D L V O S A N E H V D N A

Plaintext, +4 is:

K K S I Y Y E K B S R A E C I Q E R D Q I Q E I
M B I M B A E C Y I N H P C S A E R I M C H R E

    This is a perfect example of Bacon's use of acrostics within words of a text. Mr. Ross does not mention the many acrostic examples in my 1990 book because he hasn't read it. Even so, he says that my examples are "just boilerplate from the book." When and if he does, he will find most of them accompanied by a signal, a hint. Here this signal is obvious to all but Mr. Ross.

MY NAME WAS NOT FAR OFF: IM BAECYIN.

    Bacon's fascination with acrostics led him to rewrite his own previously published works. He hints at ciphers with suggestive words, in "The Life of Henry the Fift" (ii, 2, 53), and, compared to the 1600 Quarto, these lines were painstakingly rearranged when edited for the 1623 Folio.

    In the earlier Quarto he had written:

If litle faults proceeding on distemper should not bee winked at,
How should we stretch our eye, when capitall crimes,
Chewed, swallowed and digested, appeare before vs:
Well yet enlarge the man, tho Cambridge and the rest
In their deare loues. . .

    Now we may glimpse the cryptographer at work, as he redrafts this excerpt, so as encipher the initial capital letters of each line for the 1623 Folio:

If little faults proceeding on distemper,
Shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye
When capitall crimes, chew'd, swallow'd, and digested,
Appeare before vs? Wee'l yet inlarge that man,
Though Cambridge, Scroope, and Gray, in their deere care

Ciphertext is:

I S V A T

Ciphertext reversed is:

T A V S I

Plaintext (+4) is:

B E C A N

    The sense of these lines was scarcely modified, and the remainder of this speech of King Henry V was not altered.

    In the edited version the clues have been preserved for the benefit of the most intractable academicians. The lower case letters in the original version have been "inlarged". By the use of "capitalls" the writer has directed our attention to these newly minted upper case letters. For what reason were these transformations made, unless to encipher the author's name?

    A cardinal measure of cipher authenticity -- intention -- has been demonstrated. The author has left behind an unmistakable "smoking pistol". But Mr. Ross ignores this revealing revision and several others shown in my pamphlet and book.

    "Bote-swaine" still troubles Mr. Ross. It is, of course, the first word of dialogue on the first page of the first printing of the first play in the 1623 Folio. It translates as FS BIACEN. He would like to change it to "Boatswain," which is never used on the first page, only in the remaining pages. Or he would like to change it to Hiawatha (BECEN reversed, with no FS preceding), so fond is he of Longfellow. But it can't be changed. It will remain there for eternity, just where Francis Bacon put it.

    Yes, the odds against finding it there are high. The odds are exactly 13,500,000,000 to one against. That's BILLION, pilgrim. But Mr. Ross would like to slide around that word, into the text. He says that I "assume that the First Folio is nothing but an enormous random string of characters."

    No, I do not. It is unnecessary to assume any such thing. The remaining 900,000 words in the text do not affect "Bote-swaine," much as he insinuates that they do. What they do is to add a multiplier to the odds, immense as they already are. This was the first publication of The Tempest. Why was this word selected to have the honor of being the initial word by Francis Bacon? It wasn't, says Mr. Ross in effect; IT WAS CHOSEN BY MR. SHAKESPEARE FROM THE GRAVE! But the First Word of dialogue in the First Folio tells it all.

    If we can be expected to follow the rules of logic in this discussion, then we have here a classic Aristotelian non-sequitur; it is called Begging the Question. For the purposes of the argument (did Bacon or Shakespeare write the plays?) he ASSUMES that Shakespeare did, thus avoiding an embarrassing dispute. "What are the odds that the first word of dialogue is Bote-swaine?" he writes. "I'd say there's about a 100% chance if it, since that's the way Shakespeare began the play."

    "Bote-swaine" seems to have become a torment to his belief in the country boy from Stratford. It is his albatROSS and will remain so.

    Mr. Ross claims that I have admitted -- oh, so many things that I'm not sure what. Mr. Ross doesn't believe the fable I invented in my previous Reply. I have admitted nothing, but I contend that a valid "Caesar" cipher of the nature that Bacon used can be employed to encipher and decipher any text. Mr. Ross wants to use it on Hiawatha; this is like breeding a bull to an elk. He utterly ignores the clues, the signals that exist in Shake-speare's Works that lead adroitly to the name of the author. But he doesn't wish to find them or recognize that they exist.

    Had Mr. Ross been working with William F. Friedman during WWII while the Army Signal Corps was perfecting MAGIC, and decrypting text from Japanese radio broadcasts, he would have objected eagerly. "That doesn't prove anything. Now you must try deciphering radio messages from Nigeria. If any interpretable pieces of text appear, then MAGIC is utterly invalid."

    I will say again: the Stratfordian scholars just blink it. They haven't two good facts to rub together in their entire inventory of Shakespearean information, as Mark Twain declared. They infer, they suppose, they assume, they are justified in believing, they deduce, they presume. Then they scoff, they mock, they sneer.

    Cryptographers have, since Caesar's time, recognized that critical names of persons or places must always be misspelled for reasons of security, a principle which Mr. Ross disbelieves. He says that Bacon's name can be found in many, many words. So he sent me his list of 716 which he calls "magic words." Here are a few of his magic examples:

alderliefest, aseismatic, bismethyl, boisvert, cathismata, colliquate, cubicontravarient, deliquate, diaskeuast, disematism, elisavetgrad, hiemate, Hiawatha, hiemate, iafrate,irvette, Lepismatidae, metamericallyt, etc.

    Does Mr. Ross believe that these strange words existed in the 15th Century? Or that they can be found in the Shakespeare Works? Does he think that his list of 716 such words is a complete refutation of the existence of cipher in the Works? Or clear proof that Bacon wrote Hawthorne's Works?

    As a condolence, Mr. Ross has written me a poem in the meter of Hiawatha. Not being a poet, I cannot respond. However I can copy some lines from the Introduction to Hiawatha, in their correct order but perhaps omitting a few.

Should you ask me, Whence these stories? And their wild reverberations Should you ask where Nawadaha Found these legends and traditions? I should answer, I should tell you In the birds nests of the forest In the melancholy marshes Ever sighing, ever singing. Listen to these wild traditions To this song of Hiawatha Ye who love the haunts of Nature Ye who sometimes in your rambles Pause by some neglected graveyard For a while to muse and ponder On a half-effaced inscription Written with little skill of song-craft Stay and read this rude inscription.

    There is no "half-effaced name inscription" on Shakespeare's rudely composed epitaph:

GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE,   TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE. BLESE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES,   AND CVRST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES.

    There is, inexplicably, no name mentioned at all!  Unless, of course, you can read an enciphered name, like FS BACAIN. Hic Sepultus.

Gitche Gumee
[Translation: Never trust an Indian with two left arms.]