Coded Authorship Messages? Seven or Eight Examples.

by Rae West 1998; much of this material © David Roper

1. The Dedication to the Sonnets, 1609.     John Rollett on the Sonnets. John Rollett spoke, at the AGM of the de Vere Society in January 1998 in London, on ciphers in the dedication to the sonnets. He emphasised that the dedication is usually printed wrongly, something verifiable by looking at modern books: onlie, happinesse, the punctuation, and the layout itself, are usually very unlike the original. Rollett seemed to imply this careless practice was begun when Malone in the 19th century misprinted it. For the decoder of ciphers, the original layout may be crucially important ...

1. John Rollett says the odd wording, and use of dots, are completely unlike any other dedication by Thorpe.
2. He claims the arrangement of 6, 2, and 4 lines in three groups reflects the three words in Edward de Vere's name.
3. Picking out 6th, 2nd, 4th etc words gives THESE SONNETS ALL BY EVER, or, perhaps, E. VERE. (Rollett however omitted the final two words!)

   Two Coded Messages?         Does the arrangement of words in shaped groups of six lines, two lines, and four lines hint at the name Edward de Vere? And, if six, two, and four are therefore significant, is the hidden message 'These sonnets all by E. Vere' encoded, with the dots reducing ambiguity and providing convenient emphasis?

4. There are 144 characters (ignoring dots, hyphens, and T.T.), suggesting a code, at least to people aware that perfect squares are rare and that 12 has many factors. Rollett says the spelling 'onlie' is rare, and suggests it was selected to juggle the number of letters to total exactly 144.
5. Rollett assumes 'Mr', despite the tiny size of the 'r', counts as two letters, and omits to consider the gap after 'Mr W H'.
6. Rollett quotes John Dee, who apparently recommended a horizontal boustrophedon arrangement of words, i.e. writing the words alternately forward and backward in a grid, then reading down for the code. David Roper said it was also common to use Fibonacci series, or prime numbers, to select words. Rollett however used the simplest method - words in normal sequence - in a 9 by 16 grid.
       He found 'Henry' and seemed to cause 'Wriothesley' (the latter in two halves) to emerge from his grid - with probability he claimed of one in a few billion.




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144 letters of the Dedication fitted into 9 rows of 16. I've treated 'Mr' as 'M' and left a corresponding space.     The word 'Henry' is visible here - though you have to hunt a bit to find it; (it occurred to me to wonder whether modern word puzzles of this simple sort have an Elizabethan origin.) Thank goodness 'Henry' isn't upside down!

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Fifteen columns make 'Henry' vertical...     ... but I couldn't recall how 'Wriothesley' can be made to emerge (in two parts).

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7. David Roper in writing (dated 11 April 1998) provided me with the following: ‘... HENRY is formed by a continuous 15 ELS, and WRIOTHESLEY by a discontinuous 18 ELS which in part runs in reverse. Rollett has also ignored the significance of W. HALL. Let me explain. William Hall was a neighbour of Lady Oxford during her residence in Hackney. In 1606 he somehow acquired the manuscript of Robert Southwell's poem A Foure-fold Meditation and published it using George Eld's print shop (the same man that printed the Sonnets). It is construed that as a neighbour of the Oxfords he managed to acquire the manuscripts of the sonnets during the upheaval of the countess's removal to Castle Hedingham in 1608. It is in this sense that W.Hall is the begetter, and the happinesse, etc., wished for him, can therefore be attributed to his recent marriage (4th August 1608) to Margery Gryffyn.

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   David Roper: 'Equidistant Letter Sequence' code of repeat 18 (with careful selection of starting point to keep the words in the same frame) shows 'Henry'. And also 'Wriothesley', in three parts, one reversed. On 'Mr W Hall', and 'Nil Nero Verius', see below. O V R   E V E R   L I V I N G     O V R E   V E R     I V     G                   L     I N     N I L   V E R O   V E R I V S

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       ‘Some years ago, I pointed out to Rollett that Ever-living was hyphenated, and should in consequence be considered as a single word when operating the 6-2-4 sequencing. He acknowledged my letter but ignored its significance. Which seems a pity, because by applying a 6-2-4-6 skip we obtain ... “These ... Sonnets ... All ... By”. What immediately follows, i.e. Our Ever-living, is actually an anagram of Oxford's motto - Nil Vero Verius. Hence, these sonnets all by Nil Vero Verius. To achieve this anagram an 's' has been substituted for the 'g'. However, this does not matter when the anagram is perfect. That is to say, if the sense of what is given has an obvious connection with the sense of what it becomes, then a single letter change is permissable. Consequently, in the eyes of the cryptographer, Edward de Vere was Shakespeare, and this provided a legitimate connection between Ever-living and Nil Vero Verius. ...’
   
   
8. David Roper in effect implies the space after W.H. distracts from the possibility that the reader will attach H to ALL.
       John Rollett had nothing to say on the suggestive large numbers of Vs and Ws in the dedication. There are 23 Es, 3 Ds, 4 Ws, 5 As, 8 or 9 Rs, 6 Vs: easily sufficient for 'Edward de Vere' or 'Edward Vere'. Nor so far as I know did David Roper.
       However, by inspecting Roper's grid, can I draw the reader's attention to the following: start with the first V in 'ADVENTVRER' (underlined) and move NW, wrapping around the edges. You'll get an anagram of ‘Vere his epigram’ which is ‘perfect’ in David Roper's sense - i.e. there is one final incorrect letter. I was pleased to find this but have no idea whether I'm the first or whether, in fact, it means what it seems to say. (21 April 98 stop press: David Roper e-mails me: ‘Absolutely brilliant. I have no doubt your solution is entirely genuine. Do put it on your page as soon as possible.’ Thanks, David!)
       (Note on possessives: the apostrophe s construction, for example in 'the President’s men', is a contraction - according to L Pearsall-Smith the usage is an abbreviation for 'his', and the full form would be 'the President his men'. (Pearsall-Smith didn't mention 'her'). This is why some pedants disallow the apostrophe s construction for things, and frown on say 'the table’s leg'. Being aware of this helped me push on past the otherwise discouraging letters VEREHSI.)
9. Stop press 24th April 98: Another email from David points out that there's a better anagram: including the two terminal letters of the group, we get the letter-perfect anagram: TO VERE HIS EPIGRAM. Thanks, David - I was already feeling the burden of being the discoverer (or at least noticer) of the message... The cells with background color red, in the diagram, show the letters which form the anagram.

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2. Thomas Bokenham finds Bacon in Westminster Abbey.

[Following extracted from 23 Oct 1994 BBC TV 'Battle of Wills']
    Thomas Bokenham, Chairman of the Francis Bacon Society (this seems to have changed its name at least once; founded 1885 by Mrs Henry Pott) displays a 1624 book, CRYPTOMENYTICES ET CRYPTOGRAPHIÆ which has many techniques of cryptography (we're told) including 'squaring a text' then selecting every 7th letter as a message. Squaring means writing it, omitting spaces in a regular grid, so it can repeat (otherwise why not just pick every 7th letter without bothering).
    Bokenham applies this technique - or something similar - to the 1741 Poets Corner memorial ‘by Lord Burlington and Alexander Pope’ in Westminster Abbey, which has a marble ‘Shakespeare’ pointing to this marble message:
      ‘The Cloud cupt Tow’rs
      The Gorgeous Palaces
      The Solemn Temples.
      The Great Globe itfelf
      Yea all which it Inherit
            Shall Difsolve
      And like the bafelefs Fnbrick of a vision
      Leave not a Wreck Behind.’

(Where cupt, Fnbrick, Wreck are definite mistakes; the ws resemble swung dashes.)
    When ‘squared’ (with a repeat, for no clear reason that I recall, of 13) we find this as part of the result:-

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From which ‘Francis’, ‘Bacon’, and ‘Author’ can be picked out when the clues represented by the erroneous letters are followed (I've helpfully intensified the letters & coloured the deliberate mistakes red) - at least according to Bokenham, who added: “Can you think of any reason why Francis Bacon should be on a monument to Shakespeare? I can't.” He didn't seem to realise all it perhaps proved was that Pope and Burlington believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare. - RW

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3. Hostile look at these methods. By T P Leary, a Baconian.
Feb. 16, 1997

I have been asked to peer-review a paper submitted for publication to Cryptologia by Dr. J. M. Rollett. This is concerned with the, admittedly, strange Dedication to "Shakespeare's Sonnets." Dr. Rollett maintains that he has found the name of Henry Wriothesley in the text.

The Dedication is to "Mr. W. H." and some scholars believe these are Wriothesley's initials, but reversed.

I will attempt to show that Dr. Rollett's solution is based on anagramming. Therefore I will quote others who have contested the validity of such techniques.

David Kahn, in his comprehensive study of cryptographic methods, criticizes anagramming. Referring to Ignatius Donnelly's work, and others, he writes that, "enigmatologists frantically nail together wild tottering structures upon the quicksands of conjecture."

The pedestrian anagrammist selects, most arbitrarily and without a regular procedure, letters or groups of letters of a supposed cipher text to make words, names or phrases which appear to be a valid plain text. He may, or may not, then arrange them in a certain order, but without a consistent plan.This is to be distinguished from the genuine cryptanalyst's method of anagramming, also by conjecture, to fill in missing letters of a partially deciphered plain text by assuming them to be particular letters. Sometimes the guesses are correct and sometimes not, but the device is a strategy that often leads to a solution.

William F. and Elizebeth Friedman offer two examples of anagrams:
Radical reform       Rare mad frolic
Presbyterian       Best in prayer

They write, "Anagramming has always been popular; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries all the best people did it; nowadays newspapers run anagrammatic competitions . . . though Dryden exaggerated when he suggested that by anagramming one could 'torture one poor word ten thousand ways,'it remains true that there is an element of indeterminacy in forming anagrams. . . it is only a matter of juggling with the letters to form a new sequence.There need be no system in the rearrangement, and no fixed rules."

However, the Friedmans continue, (referring to the "long word" in Loves Labour's Lost, honorificabilitudinitatibus, which many writers have hopefully anagrammed)". . .As it is, as many different 'solutions' emerge as there are different 'solvers.' Anyone can make of the word whatever he manages to make; but whatever he makes of it, someone else is sure to produce an alternative. The effort is damned from the start, for the process is without any fixed rules, without any unique solution, and without any cryptological validity.I haven't tried the long word on it!"

Dr. Rollett includes a facsimile of the Dedication which will not copied here.

The language is indeed strange, particularly in the spelling, and is subject to more than one interpretation. It is entirely in capital letters (except for a superscripted "r" in "Mr." and each word ends in a period. These factors,he believes, justify him in suspecting the text to conceal a cipher, and this may not be an unreasonable assumption.

Leaving aside the historical arguments for concluding that Wriothesley was the dedicatee, Dr. Rollett presents the following table:

T O T H E O N L I E B E G E T T E R
O F T H E S E I N S V I N G S O N N
E T S M r W H A L L H A P P I N E S
S E A N D T H A T E T E R N I T I E
P R O M I S E D B Y O U R E V E R L
I V I N G P O E T W I S H E T H T H
E W E L L W I S H I N G A D V E N T
V R E R I N S E T T I N G F O R T H

The text consists of 144 letters, not including the "signature," T. T. The letters that, seem to him, form Wriothesley's name are shown as bold. His table is eight letters high and 18 letters wide.

Dr. Rollett offers no argument as to why this arrangement is to be favored over others, except that the bolded letters, as he rearranges them, spell the required name. There are, of course, other ways to arrange them; actually twelve. The integer factors of 144 are: 1-144, 2-72, 3-48, 4-36, 6-24, 8-18,9-16, and 12-12. Each of these factors can be reversed; for example his table might be 18 letters high and 8 letters wide instead of the table shown. So there are 24 ways to arrange them in a complete rectangle with no blanks.

Yes, in the table shown, there are letters which accurately spell parts of Wriothesley's name. However there is apparently no fixed plan or procedure by which they may be fitted together for this purpose. "W R" is more or less off by itself, and to add these to "I O T H" it is necessary to move them to the right nine letters, and then up two while skipping "I N."

Then two letters, "V B" must also be skipped and a corner turned to fit the first series onto the remaining "E S L E Y"

I must suggest that these manipulations are simply the methods of anagramming that would be censured by both Kahn and the Friedmans. Dr. Rollett does not furnish us tables of cipher letters found in the other 23 rectangular arrangements.

He does propose another table, 9 high and 16 wide, which spells "HENRY"diagonally, or vertically if arranged in an (incomplete) rectangle of 7 letters high and 15 letters wide, but there seems to be no exoneration of the method from the previous objections.

Dr. Rollett has toiled assiduously and has, apparently, typed out all the possible 24 regular rectangles and inspected them for accidental words (whether read vertically or horizontally he does not say). There are only three complete five letter words, he reports, and no six-or-more words. He then calculates the odds against there being any five letter words (including -esley) as 1 in 270,000. He extrapolates this figure to 1 in 320 million for finding the full name of "Henry Wriothesley," but, regretfully, he has not found it.

I will not remark upon the remaining observations in the paper (he refers to his decryption as a "transposition cipher" or perhaps a "skytale") because they fail to distinguish Dr. Rollett's methods of anagramming from other, more acceptable practices.

Very truly,

Thomas (Penn) Leary

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