Bacon's Signature Ciphers in Shakespeare -93- Monument

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54)  Shakespeare’s Monument

Now, after just seeing on the previous page how we found a numerical signature cipher for ‘Francis’ after a line saying ‘Seek not my name’, we could be reminded of a similar phrase in the Shakespeare Monument in Holy Trinity Parish Church in Stratford upon Avon.

http://churchmonumentssociety.org/Monument%20of%20the%20Month%20Archive/2010_03.html

One of the intriguing aspects of this monument is the unusual plaque beneath the bust which, in a different way than Timon’s epitaph, challenges the reader to pause and “read if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast [placed]”within it.

Like the Timon epitaph it makes the curious authorship sleuth want to find some hidden name. And I know that one has already been proposed for Edward De Vere that’s quite interesting. It can be read about here:

 http://www.wjray.net/shakespeare_papers/shakespeare-monument.htm

Yet I wondered if there might be something from the numerical code signature perspective that Bacon may have used. Knowing from past cipher candidate examples that these hidden ciphers are often advertised in various clever ways and that Shake-Speare was a master of word play, I was attracted to the part in the plaque that suggested the ‘Whom’ could be found placed within ‘this Monument’. The surface interpretation, of course, is that William Shakspeare of Stratford is the one whom Death hath placed within the monument. But notice that the whole physical structure is not the only monument to hide a secreted author. There is the word ‘Monument’ itself, and actually that is where the plaque precisely says we could read whom is within it and it may be the reason the name Shakspeare doesn’t precede and directly modify the word ‘monument’. So with this clue I found that the simple count for ‘monument’ equaled 108:

M=12, O=14, N=13, U=20, M=12, E=5, N=13, T=19 = 108

And though this number isn’t significant in the Simple cipher alphabet, it is so in the Reverse alphabet in which it’s equivalent to the name ‘Francis’. Now, I haven’t hardly mentioned or used the Reverse alphabet because I wanted to make it more difficult to find any significant numerical codes. It’s only been used in a supporting role in the word ‘Free’ and as a possible additional explanation for the connecting of the word ‘Fool’ with a hidden name or code. But here it works nicely. Still, by itself I think it would be weak. Also, we had to resort to the speculation that a double enciphering was used in that the 108 count was found with the Simple alphabet and its significance only being associated with the Reverse alphabet. I argued earlier, with cipher candidate #6 on page 35, that this is quite possible, so it can’t be rejected just because there might be this connected use of separate alphabets. But it does weaken it I think. So, with the possible clue that we should employ the reverse alphabet further, which is here:

I found that the word Monument in this Reverse alphabet has a count of:

M=13, O=11, N=12, U=5, M=13, E=20 N=12, T=6 = 92 which equals the same value as ‘Bacon”

And these two numerical codes both being exactly where the plaque said we could read whom had been placed and hid within it, we have another cipher candidate that I think will be difficult to prove as a coincidence.

Bacon's Signature Ciphers in Shakespreare -92- Timon of Athens

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53)  Timon’s Epitaph.

We saw earlier on page 69 cipher candidate number 33, involving an excerpt from The Life of Tymon of Athens in which a “Foole” had a description like that of Francis Bacon—a Spirit sometimes appearing like a Lord, a Lawyer, a Philosopher, and a Knight, with derived count of ‘67’, the simple code for “Francis’.

Well, on the last page of the play (p. 98 of the Tragedies) we have another cipher candidate. Here is what the 1623 Folio has on that page:

This Epitaph has been called ‘Absurd’ because it first says “Seek not my name” as if it’s hidden. And then it follows in the next line immediately beneath with “Heere lye I Timon”. Editors naturally consider it another mistake since the first two lines are a separate epitaph (for the same Timon) written by a separate author, than the next two lines. The Arden Shakespeare of the play leaves out the first two lines. They speculate that either Shakespeare or his supposed co-playwright Thomas Middleton, first included both epitaphs as alternatives that Plutarch had included in his work -- one of them by Timon himself and the other from the poet Callimachus. The speculation is that Shakespeare and/or Middleton hadn’t decided on which Epitaph would be the final version so they had both in the original manuscript. But then when it came time to publish the text they simply had forgotten to cross out one of the versions. 

Well, here’s my speculation: Bacon, as Shakespeare, saw in the two versions an opportunity for another cleverly embedded cipher of his name. The first epitaph has the intriguing attention getter of “Seek not my name” and then came the absurd “Heere lye I Timon”. He spoke of the differences in those who just took in appearances as truth versus those that could see deeper into something’s hidden nature. The unsuspicious would, as the scholars have, quickly judge it to be a mistake as it appears to be and “pass and not stay” to look any deeper. This would be very much how mainstream scholars for ages took for truth that the earth was the center of the universe as it appeared to be. But a cipher sleuth pauses at the absurdity and sees the possibility for something not apparent. He then examines the most likely hiding place “Heere lye I Timon” and finds that the name Timon has a count of T=19, I=9, M=12, O=14,and N=13 for a total of 67, again the same as for ‘Francis’.

And that, again, better explains the apparent absurd mistake and answers what name was teasingly hidden.