Shakespeare Cipher Stories, Part 1

Summary: Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? Many people doubt that, for various reasons-the most obvious one being that a barely literate actor from the sleepy village of Stratford-on-Avon could not possibly have written with such accuracy and familiarity the many scenes in the plays that invoke the classics or the pomp of nobility and royal courts. Furthermore, no manuscripts by Shakespeare were ever found, and only six Shakespeare signatures are known to exist. The signatures all lo...

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? Many people doubt that, for various reasons-the most obvious one being that a barely literate actor from the sleepy village of Stratford-on-Avon could not possibly have written with such accuracy and familiarity the many scenes in the plays that invoke the classics or the pomp of nobility and royal courts. Furthermore, no manuscripts by Shakespeare were ever found, and only six Shakespeare signatures are known to exist. The signatures all look different and give the impression they were written by a man who was not used to holding a pen. Some speculate that others' hands may have guided his own as he wrote them. If someone other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems published under his name, who was it? And did this secret author insert clues as to his real identity in his works? These are two separate questions, and one does not necessarily imply the other. Various bright Elizabethans have been championed as the true author simply based on their literary abilities, their fitting educational and social background, and plausible motives for wanting to conceal their authorship-among them Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford; Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland; William Stanley, Earl of Derby; and Sir Francis Bacon. In the last few centuries, quite a few people in the old and the new world alike have undertaken the search for hidden messages in Shakespeare's works that would prove such authorship. Anagrams, acrostics, word ciphers, string ciphers, letter ciphers, they've all been found. But are they all for real? Anyone interested in the various ciphers said to have been found in Shakespeare's works should read The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined by William and Elizebeth Friedman. This thoroughly researched book from 1957 is out of print but copies can be found in libraries or on the Internet. Mr. Friedman, a professional cryptologist who helped decode the tantalizing Enigma ciphers employed by the Nazis during World War II, has been called one of America's foremost cryptographers. The Friedmans investigated dozens of ciphers allegedly discovered in the works of Shakespeare and analyzed them according to professional criteria of what constitutes a valid cipher. It's fair to say that in the process, little of the various cipher claims was left standing. One of the better-known efforts they showed to be unsound was that by Ignatius Donnelly. Donnelly, an attorney and politician, published The Great Cryptogram in the late 1880s. He revealed an elaborate and very impressive mathematical system of "root numbers," "multipliers" and "modifiers" that produced messages such as "