THE NEW SHAKESPEARE-BACON CONTROVERSY.

By Garrett P. Serviss.

The Cosmopolitan, New York, March, 1902.

That smoldering question which nothing seems able to extinguish, “Did Shakespeare write the Shakespeare plays?” and the related question, “Is there a cipher hidden in those plays, which not only reveals their real authorship but betrays important state secrets of the time of Queen Elizabeth?” have just been brought before the public mind in a new and startling aspect.

And this time the problem is presented in a form which renders it capable of being submitted to something like a scientific test. It is, in fact, put upon a mechanical basis, so that it becomes a mere question of distinguishing between different shapes of printers’ types.

Mrs. Elizabeth W. Gallup, of Detroit, Michigan, avers that while engaged in an examination of old editions of the works of Francis Bacon, trying to trace there a “Cipher Story,” the key to which was discovered by Dr. O. W. Owen, to whom she was acting as an assistant, she became convinced that the careful explanation which Bacon has given in his celebrated work,De Augmentis Scientiarum, of a species of secret writing, invented by him, and which he calls a “Bi-literal Cipher,” was intended to serve some other purpose besides that of a mere treatise on the subject.

This Cipher is based upon the use of two slightly different fonts of type and, as we shall presently see, has nothing whatever to do with the literary form or sense of the books in which it is alleged to be concealed.

Remembering those puzzling italicized passages that occur in the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, published in 1623, and for which no satisfactory explanation has ever beenoffered, Mrs. Gallup immediately examined them to see if, perchance, the bi-literal cipher described by Bacon might not be found in them. Apparently she was not confident of success, but, to her great surprise, as she affirms, the cipher was there!

She began to read it out, and if the story of what she says she found is true, nobody can wonder that she felt she had madetheliterary discovery of the age.

Let us say at once that it is not only in the Shakespeare Plays that the alleged cipher is hidden, but it appears also in the works that were published under Bacon’s own name, being confined, as in the plays, to the italicized portions—italicized for no discoverable reason—and also, surprising to relate, in a variety of other books of the Elizabethan period, such as Spenser’sShepherd’s CalendarandFaerie Queene, Burton’sAnatomy of Melancholy, the plays of Peele, Greene and Marlowe, and even some parts of the plays of Ben Jonson.

Through all of these works, according to Mrs. Gallup, who has just filled a large octavo volume with her asserted revelations, runs a story, composed by Francis Bacon, and repeated over and over again, in varying, but never contradictory, forms, in which he affirms that he was the son of Queen Elizabeth by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, to whom she was secretly married in the Tower of London when before her accession to the throne, both she and the Earl were imprisoned there; that, in order to keep his birth secret, he was given, while a child, to Sir Nicholas Bacon and his wife Anne, who brought him up as if he were their own son; that he did not discover the truth about his birth until he was sixteen years old, when an intimation of it reached his ears through the indiscretion of a lady of the court, and then his mother, the Queen, in a fit of passion, confessed the truth to him, and immediately afterward sent him away to France in charge of Sir Amyas Paulet; and that while he was in southern France he fell in love with Marguerite, the beautiful wife of King Henry of Navarre, and the play ofRomeo and Julietwas afterward based upon this romantic episode in his life. In other parts of the story Bacon is represented as affirming that Queen Elizabeth had another son from her secret unionwith the Earl of Leicester, this being no less a person than the Earl of Essex, who was afterward executed for high treason by his mother’s command. Essex was thus, according to the story, Bacon’s younger brother, and, in the Cipher, Bacon appears as constantly lamenting the share which he unwillingly had in the tragic fate of his brother.

This story, whether it truly exists in the alleged Cipher or is the product of imagination, cannot fail to hold the reader’s attention, but before pursuing it farther let us see what the Bi-literal Cipher is.

In his work,De Augmentis Scientiarum, Bacon first shows that a cipher alphabet can be formed by various transpositions of the two leading letters of the ordinary alphabet, a and b, in sets of five, each set representing one letter of the Cipher, thus:

Such an alphabet in itself would be of no use for secret writing. For instance, let us print the word “Bacon” in it. It would run: aaaab, aaaaa, aaaba, abbab, abbaa. If a series of sentences were written, or printed, in that manner it is evident that the merest tyro would quickly discover the key and decipher the message.

Bacon’s next step, then, is to contrive a way in which the alphabet above described can be “infolded” in a printed book so that each set of five successive letters composing the words of the book, without changing their order and without reference to the meaning that they convey to the ordinary reader, shall represent one of the letters of the hidden Cipher. For this purpose it is necessary to employ two fonts of type, in which the forms of the letters slightly differ. Call one the “a font” and the other the “b font;” then every letter in the “a font” will stand for “a” in making up the sets of five a’s and b’s that compose the letters of the cipher alphabet, and similarly every letter of the b-font will stand for “b.”

Note:An extended illustration of the working out of the cipher is omitted here, the manner of it being fully illustrated in two other parts of the volume.

Thus, by simply printing three sentences, containing one hundred and twenty-five letters in two kinds of type, another entirely different sentence, containing only twenty-five letters, is inclosed in them, and can be read only by one who holds the clue to the double system of types, which Bacon calls a Bi-literal Cipher. It is not necessary in any manner to interfere with the order of the words in the original work, and any book in existence could be made to hold a cipher of this kind. The only restriction upon the proceedings of the person who inserts the cipher is imposed by the necessity of using up five letters of the original for every one letter of his inclosed cipher.

In Bacon’s alleged use of the Cipher he is said to have included it only in the italicized portions of the books wherein it is found, using two fonts of Italic letters.

Now, even if the existence of such a Cipher in the Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, whose typographical eccentricities have long been a puzzle, can be established, that fact would not in itself affect the question of the authorship of the Plays. Being simply a matter of the types employed, any printer, if he had the opportunity—not to speak of a sufficient motive—could have inserted the story which Mrs. Gallup professes to have extracted.

Of course Bacon himself could thus have inserted it without having had anything to do with the original composition of the Plays. In fact, however, he claims in the alleged Cipher Story that he was the real author of those immortal compositions, as well as of other books, such as Spenser’sFaerie Queeneand Marlowe’s plays.

But the reader is likely to say: “This is so simple a matter that it should have been cleared up long ago. If there are two kinds of type used in the Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, and if all the italicized portions are printed in that manner, and filled with a secret story, it ought to be the easiest thing in the world to establish the fact by simple examination.” So it would be if the fonts of type alleged to have been employed by Bacon were as clearly distinguished from one another as are those which he used in illustrating the principle of the Bi-literal Cipher in hisDe Augmentis, orthose which we have selected for a similar purpose. But, in fact, there is no such clear distinction. It may indeed be said that Bacon would have defeated his own end by making the differences of type manifest at the first glance. He had to choose letters which should be so nearly alike that they would pass under the ordinary reader’s eyes without exciting suspicion, and yet should be sufficiently varied to be distinguished without too great difficulty when at last the key was discovered and the deciphering begun.

Not only are the differences admitted by Mrs. Gallup, especially in the case of the small characters, to be so slight that very close examination is required to preceive them, but she avers that Bacon was not satisfied with using only two fonts; he employed many different fonts, and sometimes changed the order of their distribution among the “A’s” and “B’s,” apparently for the purpose of more surely concealing his cipher, for he is represented as saying that his life would be in danger if the fact became known that he was using this method of handing down to posterity secrets concerning the highest personages in the State which the few who were acquainted with them dared not whisper above their breath.

As Mr. Mallock has suggested, the thing to do is not to photograph the pages said to contain the cipher down to the dimensions of an octavo, as has been done, but to magnify them, in order that the typographical variations may be made more evident. By adopting that plan it may be possible to submit the whole question to a decisive test. At any rate, it is a question that can be tested by a mechanical examination, and there certainly seems to be no occasion for the display of heat and bad temper that has been called forth in some quarters by the discussion. On the contrary, it is full of interest, whichever way it may be decided.

Returning to the revelations which Mrs. Gallup assures us have been extracted from the books named with the aid of the Bi-literal Cipher, we come upon another point more surprising still. The Bi-literal Cipher is believed by her to have been intended as a key to other, more difficult, forms of cipher embedded by Bacon in his various works. The most important of these is described as a “word-cipher,” the translation of which does not depend upon the use of any specialtype, but is to be effected by means of certain key-words and directions given in the Bi-literal Cipher. This Word-Cipher, if it exists, could not have been inserted in a work originally composed without reference to it, but could only be worked into the web and woof of the composition by the original author, and to assert, as the story does, that Bacon was able to compose the finest plays that we know under the name of Shakespeare merely as cloaks for other hidden plays and narratives is indeed to tax credulity to its limit.

It will be observed that the “word-cipher” does not admit of any such mechanical test as can be applied to the Bi-literal Cipher, but is a subject for choice, judgment and ingenuity in interpretation, so that, to anybody not predisposed to accept it, it can never appeal with convincing force, as the Bi-literal would do if once the typographical differences on which it is based could be completely established. Let the Bi-literal Cipher’s presence be demonstrated beyond a peradventure, and then the word-cipher would stand a better chance of acceptance, because the other asserts its existence. The word-cipher compels those who accept it to believe that the person, who put the ciphers in Shakespeare’s plays and Bacon’s learned treatises and the poems and dramatic compositions of Marlowe, Spenser, Peele and Greene and theAnatomy of Melancholycalled Burton’s, actually produced all of those works.

Using the Word-Cipher, and following the clues accorded by the Bi-literal, Mrs. Gallup has recently deciphered, as she avers, one of the concealed tragedies of Bacon. It is calledThe Tragedy of Anne Boleyn, and is made up of bits from many of Shakespeare’s plays, matched together. For instance, we find Romeo’s words put into the mouth of King Henry VIII, and applied by him to Anne Boleyn:

“O she doth teach the torches to burn bright!It seems she hangs upon the cheek of nightAs a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!”

“O she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!”

All this is well calculated to repel dispassionate investigation of Mrs. Gallup’s claims because it so far offends the common sense and judgment of the reader that he must betempted to throw the whole thing overboard at once. If the alleged discovery can ever be rendered acceptable to unprejudiced investigation, it must be on the basis of the Bi-literal Cipher alone. Let Mrs. Gallup successfully meet Mr. Mallock’s challenge by taking, as he suggests, the epistle from Macbeth to Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, Act. I, Scene 5), which is one of the passages in the first Folio printed in Italics, and indicating under each letter the font to which, according to her interpretation, it belongs. Then let Mr. Mallock have the passage photographically enlarged, so that the dullest eye can detect the smallest differences in the letters, and when the result is printed the public will have a fair chance to judge for itself.

But, whatever the outcome of the discussion aroused by Mrs. Gallup’s book may be, the story that Francis Bacon appears to tell in its pages does not fail in interest. The well-known fact that historical rumor has long whispered hints touching many of his alleged revelations serves to draw attention to them. Some of Mrs. Gallup’s critics intimate that those rumors may really be the sole foundation of her decipherings. But they do not accuse her of wilful invention, and if she has dreamed these things it must be admitted that she dreams interestingly.

Listen to Bacon’s complaint of the injustice done him, as Mrs. Gallup says she reads it in the double types of the “Advancement of Learning”:

“Queen Elizabeth, the late soveraigne, wedded, secretly, th’ Earle, my father, at th’ Tower of London, and afterwards at th’ house of Lord P—— this ceremony was repeated, but not with any of the pompe and ceremonie that sorteth wel with queenly espousals, yet with a sufficient number of witnesses.“I therfore, being the first borne sonne of this union should sit upon the throne, ruling the people over whom the Supreame Soveraigne doth shewe my right, as hath beene said, whilst suff’ring others to keepe the royall power.“A foxe, seen oft at our Court in th’ forme and outward appearance of a man, named Robert Cecill—the hunchback—must answer at th’ Divine Araignment to my charge agains’him, for he despoyled me ruthlessly. Th’ Queene, my mother, might in course of events which follow’d their revelations regarding my birth and parentage, without doubt having some naturall pride in her offspring, often have shewne us no little attenntion had not the crafty foxe aroused in that tiger-like spiritt th’ jealousy that did so tormente the Queene [that] neyther night nor day brought her respite from such suggestio’s about my hope that I might bee England’s King.“He told her my endeavours were all for sov’raigntie and honour, a perpetuall intending and constant hourlie practising some one thing urged or imposed, it should seeme, by that absolute, inhere’t, honorably deriv’d necessitie of a conservation of roiail dignity.“He bade her observe the strength, breadth and compasse, at an early age, of th’ intellectual powers I displaied, and ev’n deprecated th’ gen’rous disposition or graces of speech which wonne me manie friends, implying that my gifts would thus, no doubt, uproot her, because I would, like Absalom, steale awaie th’ people’s harts and usurp the throne whilst my mother was yet alive.”

“I therfore, being the first borne sonne of this union should sit upon the throne, ruling the people over whom the Supreame Soveraigne doth shewe my right, as hath beene said, whilst suff’ring others to keepe the royall power.

“A foxe, seen oft at our Court in th’ forme and outward appearance of a man, named Robert Cecill—the hunchback—must answer at th’ Divine Araignment to my charge agains’him, for he despoyled me ruthlessly. Th’ Queene, my mother, might in course of events which follow’d their revelations regarding my birth and parentage, without doubt having some naturall pride in her offspring, often have shewne us no little attenntion had not the crafty foxe aroused in that tiger-like spiritt th’ jealousy that did so tormente the Queene [that] neyther night nor day brought her respite from such suggestio’s about my hope that I might bee England’s King.

“He told her my endeavours were all for sov’raigntie and honour, a perpetuall intending and constant hourlie practising some one thing urged or imposed, it should seeme, by that absolute, inhere’t, honorably deriv’d necessitie of a conservation of roiail dignity.

“He bade her observe the strength, breadth and compasse, at an early age, of th’ intellectual powers I displaied, and ev’n deprecated th’ gen’rous disposition or graces of speech which wonne me manie friends, implying that my gifts would thus, no doubt, uproot her, because I would, like Absalom, steale awaie th’ people’s harts and usurp the throne whilst my mother was yet alive.”

Bacon appears also as frequently lamenting the tragic death of his (alleged) brother Robert, Earl of Essex, and inKing LearMrs. Gallup reads from the Bi-literal Cipher a statement that Essex’s life might have been saved if a signet-ring that he desired to have presented to his mother had reached her: “As hee had beene led to bel’eve he had but to send the ring to her and th’ same would at a mome’t’s warni’g bring rescue or reliefe, he relyed vainly, alas! on this promis’d ayde.... It shal bee well depicted in a play, and you wil be instructted to discypher it fully.”

In Ben Jonson’sMasques, Mrs. Gallup says, she finds among other things this statement in Bacon’s Bi-literal Cipher:

“The next volume will be under W. Shakespeare’s name. As some which have now been produced have borne upon the title-page his name though all are my owne work, I have allow’d it to stand on manie others which I myselfe regard as equal in merite. When I have assum’d men’s names, th’ next step is to create for each a stile naturall to th’ man thatyet should [let] my owne bee seene, as a thrid o’ warpe in my entire fabricke soe that it may be all mine.”

In the same work Bacon is represented as saying that Spenser, Greene, Peele and Marlowe have sold him their names. This, it would appear, was not the case with Ben Jonson, of whom he speaks as his friend, and the implication is that Jonson knew what Bacon was doing with regard to the others.

Several times Bacon is made to refer to the murder of Amy Robsart, the Earl of Leicester’s wife, of whom he intimates, as rumor has long done, that the Earl wished to rid himself in order to marry Elizabeth.

The stories of his royal birth, of his love for Marguerite of Navarre, and all the rest of the tale are repeated again and again from the various books in which the Cipher is said to lie. Frequently Bacon appeals to the unknown decipherer whom he trusts some future time to produce, urging him to spare no pains to unearth the hidden things and promising him undying fame for his labor.

Among other things alleged to be contained in Bacon’s Ciphers are translations of Homer and of Virgil, part of which, in resounding blank verse, Mrs. Gallup publishes in her book. And some of her critics aver that it bears evidence of having been based upon Pope’s translation of theIliad, because it contains names and descriptions that Pope introduced without any warrant from Homer.

It is strongly urged by some of Mrs. Gallup’s critics that if Bacon wished to tell such a story as is here put in his mouth he would never have done it in so cumbrous a fashion, but would simply have written it down and placed it under seal, in trustworthy hands, to be opened and read by posterity. But if, in spite of such objections, the existence of the Cipher should be proved, the question would then arise: “Who did put it there, if Bacon didn’t, and for what end?”

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