W. F. & E. S. Friedman: The Shakespearian Ciphers Examined

Is there a secret cypher buried in the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, or hidden on his epitaph? If
such a cypher exist, does it show that Bacon wrote the plays?

The rules governing cyphers must be unambiguous, the solution grammatically and semantically coherent. Two cryptanalysts working independently should reach identical answers.

In 1955 two professional cryptographers, William and Elizabeth Friedman, subjected the "cyphers" and "secret sigilli" to scientific testing and proved them false.

Elizabeth Wells Gallup thought Shakespeare's first folio concealed Bacon's bilateral cypher, but her results were subjective, her premises fallacious.

Other patent absurdities are patiently debunked.


Key Quotations

• Taking a page from an ordinary school edition of Julius Caesar, we produced our own message, a good outspoken one: Dear Reader: Theodore Roosevelt is the true author of this play but I, Bacon, stole it from him and have the credit. Friedman can prove that this is so by this cock-eyed cypher invented by Doctor C. (p. 162-3) [This passage debunks Dr. Cunningham's cryptographic theory by applying it's method and producing the above "message".]
  
• With each successive letter deciphered she had a choice - limited but definite - of possibilities; and so, as she went on, there would be a kind of collaboration between the decipherer and the text, each influencing the other. Hence perhaps the curious maundering wordy character of the extracted messages, very like the communications of the spirit world: with some sense but no real mind behind them, just a sort of drifting intention, taking occasional sudden whimsical turns when the text momentarily mastered the decipherer. (p. 264)
  
• ...one may well wonder if reasoned argument is going to carry much weight with investigators who are so constantly moved by the providential ordering of the merely coincidental. (p. 284)
  

W. G. & E. S. Friedman
W. G. Friedman (1891-1969) was a US Army cryptologist who ran the research division of the SIS in the 1930s, and similar services into the 1950s. His team, led by Frank Rowlett, broke Japan's PURPLE cipher, thus disclosing Japanese diplomatic secrets in World War II.

E. S. Friedman (1892-1980) was a Shakespeare enthusiast, cryptanalyst, and pioneer in U.S. cryptology who introduced her husband to the field. After working for the U.S. Navy she moved to the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Prohibition and Bureau of Customs where she successfully broke the increasingly sophisticated cyphers of numerous international smuggling and drug running rings.

Links

• Buy The Shakespearean Ciphers From Amazon.com
  
• NSA Hall of Honor - W. G. F.
  
• NSA Hall of Honor - E. S. F.
  
• Wikipedia

David Hurley
100-Word-Book-Reviews.com

William Shakespeare: Romeo And Juliet

Romeo is lovesick for Rosaline until Mercutio persuades him to gatecrash their enemy, Capulet's, party. Romeo promptly falls for Capulet's daughter, Juliet, scales a wall approaches Juliet's balcony and is well met by moonlight. A conniving Friar secretly marries them the morning after. Romeo intervenes in a swordfight, inadvertantly causing Mercutio to be killed by Juliet's cousin. He avenges Mercutio's death. Juliet is upset, Romeo banished. Juliet feigns death rather than (unlawfully) marry Paris, her father's choice. All suppose her dead, including Romeo, who kills Paris outside, himself inside the tomb. Juliet revives, plucks Romeo's dagger and perishes beside Romeo.

Key Quotations

• True, I talk of dreams,
  Which are the children of an idle brain,
  Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
  Which is as thin of substance as the air
  And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
  Even now the frozen bosom of the north
  And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence
  Turning his side to the dew-dropping south. (Mercutio)
  
• With love's light wings I did o'erperch these walls,
  For stony limits cannot hold love out,
  And what love can do, that dares love attempt. (Romeo)
  
• My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
  My love as deep: the more I give to thee
  The more I have, for both are infinite. (Juliet)
  

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, as a young man he moved to London where he worked as an actor, writer, and part owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men, a theatre company.

His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several shorter poems. His plays are performed more often than any other playwrite's and include comedies, tragedies, histories, and genre-crunching tragi-comedies and romances.