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They also
said about the authorship doubters that “They must be given something better
than derision, if only to reassure them that they are not the victims of a
merely emotional reaction on the part of those who often have a material
interest in the affair. They are entitled to a courteous and – wherever
possible – a scientific examination of their arguments.” Their book was to be
at least a start in this honorable approach.
They said
that they were only reviewing what they felt were a representative group of
ciphers supposedly showing Bacon’s authorship. At the end of their book they
gave some advice for those who wanted to continue looking for them.
So I’m going
to present what I think are some of the best Baconian cipher signatures and that either were not discussed by the
Friedmans, or that were dismissed prematurely, probably because they needed
some additional analysis for their value to be recognized. Plus I found many
new potential ciphers that have not been seen before. The Friedmans described this
particular approach as the researcher having the view that “Bacon wrote the
plays as plays, and was conscious of their worth, but felt all the more obliged
to assert his authorship in hints here and there—short snatches of sotto voce meant to put him right
with posterity” [Pages 283-4]. They had faulted the instances he examined
because “they could so easily have happened by chance.”
The findings
in this paper, all together, and some in particular, seem to me beyond chance
and exhibiting intentional design beyond the outward plays themselves. The
evidence presented is not primarily meant for “Shakespeare scholars” but
should, ideally, be evaluated by cryptology or probability experts, or maybe
those experienced with legal or scientific analysis. This is especially so
since it was a cryptology expert, often using probability analysis, who first
reviewed the early ones, even though most of the “ciphers” are more like hidden
word puzzles. It is their expert judgment on this that will matter, especially
since this is a highly political topic with great prejudice on all sides. So,
readers, if you know someone with the appropriate background then please ask
them if they might try evaluating the evidence here. And as I said, there is
plenty of non-cipher Baconian evidence that has been offered as proof of
authorship that has not been fairly examined and which could satisfy those
making an honest evaluation.
The cipher
candidates presented here are the ones I like the most and should stand or fall
on their own merit. I don’t take the
exact stand just mentioned by Freidman as one approach. That is, I don’t
necessarily believe that Bacon wrote the Shakespeare works purely as plays and
then only inserted clues to his authorship. There may be more cipher text in
them than just the supposed signatures and congruent terms, figures and ideas
that I’ll present. I don’t know. My focus has been narrow into only looking for
hidden signs of his authorship. Also, I’m not including all potentially
high-probable ciphers that I’ve seen. There are some that others have offered
that look worth examining. The ones I’m presenting here are either ones that
I’ve discovered or that I’ve found to be especially meaningful. When mentioning
the discoveries of others I’ve tried to note either the discoverer or at least
where I first found the cipher example.
One thing to
keep in mind is that when looking at the Shakespeare and Bacon writings, as
well as other contemporary works I stay with the original spelling as that is
often very important. Also, in resorting to online facsimiles of the
Shakespeare First Folio, it’s understood that they may be compilations of the
best pages of multiple copies, just as is the Norton First Folio. Any such
compilation would seem to add randomness to the facsimile used and decrease the
probability of any hidden design, making the finding of some of the hidden
signatures even less likely.
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