Bacon's Signature Ciphers in Shakespeare -81- Sonnet 111

-81-

Fun with Baconian Ciphers

Part 14

It’s now time to turn to the book of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, published in 1609. We’ve already loosely connected this volume with the number 287. The last sonnet numbered 154 together with the Kay count of 133 for the last word “FINIS” added to 287. The missing 6 sonnets in the 1640 edition added up to 287. And the letter K and A could be taken as a clue to use the Kay cipher in searching for numerical signatures. The Kay value for the word “Sonnets” is 126. This plus the last sonnet number of 154 = 280, and then the addition of the other 7 capital letters FINIS and K, A, also totaled 287, and this occurring on the final page of the Sonnets suggested an ending signature of a sort. Again, this may seem ridiculous to a skeptic but from all that we’ve seen so far, it should be understood that this is quite possibly intentional.

In addition, the total of all words (including the words Sonnets and FINIS) on the last sonnet page totals 111. This again involves a hyphenated word being counted as one word.

46) If we now look at Sonnett 111 we find something else of interest. In this sonnet the poet writes in line 5:

“Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,”

The negative connotation of having one’s name receive a brand has been applied to the actor from Stratford, as well as to several other authorship candidates. But it stands out in Bacon’s case because this name branding is associated with the Kay numerical count for “Bacon” of 111. And the word “brand” could refer to both this figure as well as a pseudonym that substitutes for his name. There are only three of the 154 sonnets with the word “brand” in them (the other two being 153 and 154) and this is the only one that associates the author’s name with it. Finally, the idea of one’s name receiving a brand is quite well known to Bacon since he used nearly that exact phrase when he wrote in his The Great Instauration: “All received or current falsehoods also (which by strange negligence have been allowed for many ages to prevail and become established) I proscribe and brand by name”. He wrote elsewhere “For from this root springs chiefly that evil, with which the learned have been branded”.  Baconian Rob Fowler has done some interesting research on the Sonnets’ numerical structure and one of his many findings is that the first letter of each line of Sonnet 111 (and this Sonnet only) sum to a Kay value of 259:

O    T    T    T    T   A    T    P   W    P   N   N   P   E

14+19+19+19+19+27+19+15+21+15+13+13+15+31 = 259 = Shakespeare

In Sonnet 72 there is the line “My name be buried where my body is.” This is an interesting thing to say when many times elsewhere the poet talks about achieving immortality through his body of works. But it makes perfect sense for a pseudonymous author whose name was buried metaphorically in cipher.