Bacon's Signature Ciphers in Shakespeare -19- Friedman criticisms

-19-

Again, the importance of this is that there’s enough evidence to warrant that this Kay alphabet was used as a secret key cipher and had some known connection to Francis Bacon.  And with the apparent disclosure of this secret cipher alphabet in the two works published after Bacon’s death, it suggests that this cipher was meant to be discovered. If so, it follows that it was also meant to be tested and applied to reveal some information that it publicly hid. If it then proved useful in finding apparent signatures of Bacon in the Shakespeare works then it would bolster the probability, at least, that he was their author. To the Friedmans it didn’t really matter anyway whether or not there was such a genuine cipher key based on the letter ‘K’. The only thing that mattered was whether or not it was a system that Shakespeare seemed to use and could be tied to Bacon.

Now with this Kay alphabet we have some more cipher candidates for Bacon’s signature. In this system “Francis” is 171, “Bacon” is 111, and “Francis Bacon” = 282.  

Now we will review the Friedman’s faults of the numerical codes evidence.

The Friedmans reviewed many of the claimed findings of supposed significant numbers in various works of the period. It seems that much of the time they didn’t so much evaluate them but instead aimed to illustrate the variety of claims. Their main complaints are that 1) there was “no system at all, and the manipulations are so easy that one can without difficulty devise “at least two different forms” of any name and proceed to find them on the same page, and scattered liberally through any collection of works;” 2) they point out that “any chosen number can stand for a whole host of different names.” They give an example how what they call the magic number 287 can be found in several names besides the “Fra Rosicrosse” (Kay Cipher count), such as “Bacon Society Incorporated” or “Queen Eliza”.  3) a third complaint was that so many variations on Bacon’s name were being used that it multiplied the chances of either their Simple or Kay counts being found. Besides his first, last, and complete name already mentioned, the early Baconians also searched for the Simple and Kay numerical equivalents of “F. Bacon”, “Fr Bacon”, “Francis Bacon Knight”, “Fr. Bacon Kt.”, “Francis Bacon Kt.”, “Sir Francis Bacon Knight”, “Fr. St Alban”, and “Francis St Alban”.  And 4) finally, once they had all these options it then appeared to the Friedmans that “In addition to this ambiguity we have noticed that any amount of unsystematic manipulation (addition, subtraction, reversal of digits, addition of digits, factorization, and indiscriminate separation of totals into sums of two or more numbers is allowed, and that there is a generous range of different counting systems (simple, reversed, Kay, and short count alphabets), so that any number inconvenient in one system may well yield a promising result in another.”  The Friedman’s final ‘proof’ of the fatuity of this system was that he created a version of William’s  own name “Wm. Friedman” that was equal to the count of ‘100’, and also “Wm & E. Friedman” to equal the Kay cipher count of 287,  thereby proving without doubt that he and his wife wrote the Shakespeare works.