CODES and CODING
Throughout it’s long history the Francis Bacon Society and many of its members have
tried to find out if there are encoded systems in their works. Such discoveries
according to their authors, have “proved” who wrote Shakespeare, or the real identity
of Francis Bacon and his mother, for example. This has been a favourite pastime
among Baconians but in the opinions of many these methods do not provide adequate
proof of anything.
The list of cryptologists and their works appearing in the Index of Baconiana’s is
long, too long to be enumerated here. Included are Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence a
High Court Judge and Penn Leary an Attorney in the USA amongst others and more
recently Thomas Bokenham the past President of our Society, who developed over
many years the “squared cipher” method which related together a number of
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, until his death at the age of 93, in 2003.
Many people cannot come to terms with the meanings within the contexts of these
several cipher or their methods. They may not be particularly interested in them nor
convinced of their validity. When asked if he thought a Judge in the High Court
would accept a legitimately contrived cryptogram as ‘cast-iron’ proof of evidence a
barrister, currently a member of the Society recently said: “No!” Why? “Because the
Judge wouldn’t understand it!”
Considerable doubt was cast over practically all cryptography discovered up to about
1957, when a certain Colonel Friedman who was a professional American
cryptographer published his book: The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined.
Friedman’s opinion has been taken to be sacrosanct by many of the Society’s
adversaries. He argued that professionally, ‘anagrams’ (a jumble of letters out of
sequence, similar to the game of scrabble): B, C, A, N, O for example, found in a text,
can be re-assembled to spell B A C O N, but may create random results depending on
their length and therefore are not fool proof, as this method may be unreliable.
However, the “squaring” method developed and extended by Bokenham from his
researches into the original work by Euan MacDuff (a Shakespearean actor) many
years after the publication of Friedman’s damning report adds a greater degree of
legitimacy, yet alone complexity, for those still interested in this pursuit. In fact,
certain fresh laws (or axioms) have to be conformed to, in order to ensure total
authenticity. Had these new encryptions been available and investigated by Friedman
in his day, it would certainly have been possible for him to come to a different verdict.
1
A most significant chapter in Friedman’s book highlights the work of one, Walter
Arensberg in America, an art collector and philanthropist who, between the years
1915 and 1921 collected works of modern art including those of French and American
avant-garde artists he befriended; he became particularly close to Marcel Duchamp,
the creator of a new art called: ‘Readymade’ who later he appointed as his agent.
Arensberg made many attempts to unravel Bacon’s cryptography, following the
formation of The Francis Bacon Foundation in U.S.A over the years: 1937 to 1950,
which he funded. In this chapter there is acknowledged the validity of Arensberg’s
method in principle, as Friedman states: ‘In my opinion’, Arensberg tells us (and we
agree), ‘none of the methods to which I have referred has been proved to have been
employed by Francis Bacon in the works of William Shakespeare.’ In spite of this, his
own conviction remains unshaken: ‘The conclusive evidence that William
Shakespeare is the pseudonym of Francis Bacon is incorporated in the original
editions of the Shakespeare plays and poems. This evidence consists of cryptograms
in which the name of the poet is signed as Francis Bacon.’
Later, Friedman quotes Arensberg as saying: ‘The numerical key–cipher employed by
Bacon and by members of the Rosicrucian Fraternity is a method of representing a
text by a number which is represented by another text.’ Friedman writes: ‘This is
about the most comprehensible sentence in the book..’
But he goes on to rubbish other approaches of Arensberg who, by this time, has died
and is therefore unable to reply to Friedman’s refutations. Arensberg focuses in
particular on the play Cymbeline by Shakespeare and The Advancement of Learning
(Novum Organum) by Bacon. He finds an anagram in Cymbeline (Act II, Scene IV,
lines 78 – 95): ‘o, C, An, C, f.s. ni, Bra’, read as FRANCIS BACON. We have since
discovered another one in Act IV, Scene II, page 390, which reads: FR BACON. But
more importantly, in Jupiter’s Label (the prologue) there is decoded in sequence, and
therefore not an anagram: FRANCIS St. ALBANS. This was published originally by
Alfred Mudie in 1929 and later referred to in Baconiana in an article called The
Cryptographers Corner (January 1939, no. 92), but apparently the importance of such
a ‘sequential’ discovery (and there are several others to hand) noted by Mudie,
escaped Friedman’s notice in the otherwise scathing comments made in his book.
By way of a simple example we reproduce below a novel method, which has just
recently come to light:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 A D G K N Q T X
2 B E H L O R U Y
3 C F I M P S W Z
Using the above Table for an encryption:
B A C O N (21 + 11 + 31 + 25 + 15) = SHAKESPEARE
In Simple Cipher (A=1, B=2..) = 103
= NOUS KEY.
Is it pure coincidence?
2
All this may sound unconvincing to the confirmed sceptic, and one needs to be
reminded that these are subjective judgements by an observer, in the absence of any
corroborative or so-called ‘cast-iron’ proof – whatever that may turn out to be.
But over many years there has accumulated more than sufficient circumstantial
evidence, in our opinion, to justify a case for saying that Francis Bacon seems to have
encoded encryptions, not only in his own work (Novum Organum) but in certain of
the works of Shakespeare where Cymbeline is the prime example - beyond reasonable
doubt. There are many works available on this subject and the reader is referred for
instance, to an entire chapter devoted to it appearing in the new book by Peter
Dawkins a renowned researcher, called The Two Poets.
Lastly - It was Mrs. Potts – the founder of The Francis Bacon Society - who published
a book: Francis Bacon and his Secret Society in 1891, in which she had this to say
about: -
What the Masons Conceal.
‘They conceal the art of finding new arts’.
The art of finding arts must certainly be a most useful art. Novum Organum is an
attempt toward somewhat of the same kind. But I much doubt that, if ever the Masons
had it, they have now lost it, since so few new arts have been lately invented and so
many are wanted.
The idea I have formed of such an art is, that it must be something proper to be
employed in all the sciences generally, as algebra is in numbers, by the help of which
new rules of arithmetic are and may be found.
The Society believes this premonition by Mrs. Potts will turn out to be correct.
For those still able to keep an open mind over such a vexed subject as cryptograms
there is reproduced here a chapter from Baconiana no.194 (1997) called: Bacon,
Shakespeare and the Rosicrucians by Karl F. Hollenbach setting forth his views about
the cipher work on the Sonnets and by way of a tribute to our late president, Thomas
Bokenham.
2004.
3