Authors crack the Bard's code

Transcription

1 The Australian Higher Education Supplement WED 19 JUL 2006, Page theaustralian.com.au/highereducation Authors crack the Bard's code Bruce Leyland and James Goding assess the latest attempt, this time using cryptology, to establish who wrote the works of Shakespeare. SHAKESPEARE wrote Shakespeare. The overwhelming majority of literary opinion holds this to be true. Doubters often have been subjected to the ad hominem accusation of snobbery or the circular argument that the genius of Shakespeare explains everything. But doubts persist. William Shakespeare of Stratford had illiterate parents and no proven education. His children died illiterate. Whoever wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare must have had lots of time, vast factual knowledge that included intimate understanding of the ways of the aristocracy and access to numerous books, many of which had not yet been translated into English. This seems improbable for a lowly paid actor from a small country village. There have been many candidates for the true author, including Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford and most recently Henry Neville, proposed by Brenda James and William Rubinstein in their book The Truth Will Out. Why would the author hide himself? Surely any normal person would demand due recognition. As an eminent member of parliament and a diplomat, Neville had the strongest possible need to hide his identity, according to James and Rubinstein. Had Neville's authorship been revealed he would almost certainly have been executed as a traitor. Richard II concerns the overthrowing of a tyrannical monarch. The play was staged many times on the eve of the failed Essex rebellion against

2 Elizabeth I. Essex was beheaded, while his fellow conspirators Neville and the Earl of Southampton narrowly escaped execution and spent two years together in the Tower of London before Elizabeth died and their titles were restored. But why is Neville even worthy of consideration? The dedication to Shakespeare's sonnets has mystified readers for hundreds of years. Addressed to a Mr W.H. (who scholars agree is the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley), it is cryptic and almost incoherent. ``T.T.'' is widely thought to represent the publisher, Thomas Thorpe. The length and spacing of the lines are odd, and each word is pointed with a full stop. Why would Shakespeare introduce the compilation of his most brilliant poetic works with such an eccentric dedication? Excluding T.T., the dedication has 144 characters, a square number. Nine years ago, James began her research. She discovered that the dedication to the sonnets was a cryptogram. It revealed a name previously unknown to her: Henry Neville. Neville was from an illustrious dynasty of courtiers famous since the Middle Ages (several of whom are referred to in the plays). He was known to be a brilliant scholar, diplomat and wordsmith. He was well-travelled and well-versed in mathematics, classical literature and astronomy. He certainly would have been familiar with cryptography because sensitive diplomatic communications of the time were encrypted. Until now, very little of the decryption has been published. James and Rubinstein do not reveal their methods. Nevertheless, there are simple solutions, it's just that they are not easy to find. When placing the text of the dedication in a matrix, the decipherer is paralysed with choices. Should the hyphens be included? What dimensions of matrix? Which interpretation of which cryptic clue? Is Mr one letter or two (or six)? What about the space after Mr? Any one wrong choice among these combinations scrambles any meaning. From thousands of permutations we have found only a handful of solutions so far. Astonishingly, there are no nonsensical solutions. Rather, each is simple, elegant and refers to authorship.

3 The simplest solution uses a matrix of 15 columns by 10 rows with an absolutely faithful transcription of the text. Close examination of the typography in the first Quarto edition reveals the abbreviation Mr as one conjoint character and a space following Mr W.H. There are also two hyphens that must be included. As was standard at the time, the letter V was interchangeable with the letter U. The name HENRY is revealed vertically in the centre of the matrix (solution one). Solution 1

4 Shakespeare's works are rich with puns and wordplay. Similarly, the dedication is full of hints. If we interpret TERNIT from the word ETERNITIE to mean ``turn the letters I and T'', several interconnected words are revealed in the middle of the matrix (solution two). Solution 2 These conjoined words read most logically as Mr SIR HENRY HE IS YOUR POET. Importantly, the words are all revealed by the decryption (though POET only by position). They are all joined and all read in the same order (left to right or top to bottom). Why Mr SIR HENRY? Both Henry Neville and his friend the Earl of Southampton were stripped of their titles on imprisonment in the Tower in Sir Henry became Mr Henry Neville, and Southampton became Mr Henry Wriothesley (Mr WH, if we ``turn it''). The honorific was an ironic endearment shared during their imprisonment, according to James and Rubinstein.

5 A second solution is revealed when the dedication is set in a matrix 12 characters wide by 13 characters deep. This solution relies on yet another hint that is contained in the dedication. ``Setting forth'' can be interpreted as meaning set aside or remove. If we take SETTING FORTH TT to mean ``remove instances of TT from the text'', another instruction is revealed: TERNIT OVRE (solution three, in which all instances of TT have been excised from the text). Solution 3

6 The text is laid out as before, with the variation that the conjoint Mr is rendered as two letters and the space following W.H. is not included. A three-word phrase is revealed with each word reversed. Looking closely at the facsimile of the dedication, the V in LIVING is an A upside down. Is this due to the printer running out of Vs or could it have been done deliberately to reinforce the clue? In any case, by turning the matrix over, the phrase becomes clear: NIVIL HID WRITER (solution four). Solution 4

7 A third message is even more deeply encrypted. The dedication has four blank lines, which may be a further cryptic clue. If we take ADVENTURER.IN.SETTING. FORTH. to mean ``move ADVENTURER IN to the fourth setting'' (the fourth line), a more detailed message of interconnected words emerges (solution five). Solution 5

8 As previously, if we follow the instruction TERNIT OVRE, the message reads from left to right and top to bottom (solution six). The words could be assembled in any order but the following seems least strained: NIVIL HID NEAR LEST MEN SHUN WRITER (solution six). Is it too fanciful to see in the words NIVIL shaking a spear WRITER? Solution 6 With the clarity of the instructions, the contiguous architecture and consistency of the word orders as well as their coherence, these messages seem to be a clear statement concerning authorship.

9 It seems incontrovertible that the true purpose of the dedication was to provide an enduring but private way of recording the true identity of the author of the greatest works of English literature, but to do so in a way that would not get him into trouble. Indeed, the longest of the solutions seems to contain a coy rationale for the writer's concealment, in line with James and Rubinstein's arguments. Why didn't they reveal the methods of decryption and their results? Rubinstein, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, remarked in a newspaper interview last year that ``codes are prima facie evidence of being a lunatic''. ``I told [James] to put that in a footnote and keep it there,'' he said. The authors and the publisher apparently felt that revealing the decryption might divert attention from the mass of other evidence that points to Henry Neville as the true author. James deserves wide recognition for being the first to solve the cryptogram; it seems likely that we have not uncovered all the messages that it contains. For many it may be too painful to relax the embrace of the beloved Bard of Stratford. But now there waits a towering intellectual and humanitarian to be discovered: Henry Neville. A large amount of Neville's correspondence and other material about him has survived, providing a treasure trove of new information to be evaluated alongside the works of Shakespeare. There is even a surviving portrait of the man who was Shakespeare, with an encrypted caption that refers to his being ``everywhere but unseen''. After 400 years, James has revealed his secret. We are going to hear a lot more about him. Bruce Leyland, a former actor and playwright, is an information technology consultant. James Goding is professor of experimental pathology at Monash University. A decrypter of genes and lover of Shakespeare's works, he was drawn into the puzzle of their authorship by the James-Rubinstein book.