Chapter III: Part 3

The inaccurately described bi-literal cipher, which Bacon, who claims to have invented it, explained with great elaboration in his _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, has nothing whatever to do with the composition or the wording of the works in which it is said to exist. It depends not on the author, but on the printer. It is altogether a matter of typography. One condition alone is necessary--control over the printing, so as to ensure its being done from specially marked manuscripts, or altered in proof. It shall, as Bacon says, be performed thus:--“First let all the letters of the alphabet, by transposition, be resolved into two letters only--hence bi-literal--for the transposition of two letters by five placings will be sufficient for 32 differences, much more than 24, which is the number of the alphabet. The example of such an alphabet is on this wise:--

A a a a a a I or J a b a a a R b a a a a
B a a a a b K a b a a b S b a a a b
C a a a b a L a b a b a T b a a b a
D a a a b b M a b a b b U or V b a a b b
E a a b a a N a b b a a W b a b a a
F a a b a b O a b b a b X b a b a b
G a a b b a P a b b b a Y b a b b a
H a a b b b Q a b b b b Z b a b b b

For the purpose of introducing this alphabet into the book which is to contain the secret message, certain letters are taken to stand for “a’s” and others for “b’s.” In Bacon’s illustration, he employed two different founts of italic type, using the letters of fount “a” to stand for “a’s,” and the letters of fount “b” to stand for “b’s.” Bacon takes the word “fuge” to exhibit the application of the alphabet, thus:--

F U G E.
a a b a b b a a b b a a b b a a a b a a

The word is enfolded, as an illustration, in the sentence _Manere te volo donec venero_, as follows:--

MANERE TE VOLO DONEC VENERO.

a a b a b | b a a b b | a a b b a | a a b a a
F. | U. | G. | E.

A more ample example of the cipher is given on the page which is here reproduced from Mrs. Gallup’s book. The work in which the “interiour” letter is enfolded is the first _Epistle of Cicero_, and the cipher letter it contains is as follows:

All is lost. Mindarus is killed. The soldiers want food.
We can neither get hence nor stay longer here.

(NOTE)--This Translation from Spedding, Ellis & Heath Ed.]

Bacon had a three-fold motive for putting his cipher into every book of merit that was published in his day. In the first place, it allowed him to claim the authorship of the book. In the second, in Mrs. Gallup’s own words, “it was the means of conveying to a future time the truth which was being concealed from the world concerning himself--his right to be King of England--secrets of State regarding Queen Elizabeth--his mother--and other prominent characters of that day--the correction of English history in important particulars, the exposure of the wrongs that had been put upon him;” and, equally important, thirdly, of publishing his version of the wrongs he had done to others, and to Essex in particular. Concerning the amazing diversity of style displayed in the many works, he says in his cipher: “I varied my stile to suit men, since no two shew the same taste and like imagination....” “When I have assum’d men’s names, th’ next step is to create for each a stile naturall to the man that yet should let my owne bee seene, as a thrid of warpe in my entire fabricke.” His explanation of the diversity of merit that is displayed in the works of Robert Greene and of Shakespeare, is not less interesting and instructive. “It shall bee noted in truth that some (plays) greatly exceede their fellowes in worth, and it is easily explained. Th’ theame varied, yet was alwayes a subject well selected to convey the secret message. Also the plays being given out as tho’gh written by the actor, to whom each had bin consign’d, turne one’s genius suddainlie many times to suit th’ new man.”

“In this actour that wee now emploie (the cipher appears in the 1611 quarto edition of _Hamlet_), is a wittie veyne different from any formerly employ’d. [Bacon appears to have forgotten that he employed the ‘masque’ of Shakespeare in the quarto editions of _Richard II._ (1598), _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, _Much Ado About Nothing_, _The Merchant of Venice_ (1600), and of _King Lear_, _Henry V._ (1608), and _Pericles_ (1609)]. In truth it suiteth well with a native spirrit, humourous and grave by turnes in ourself. Therefore, when wee create a part that hath him in minde, th’ play is correspondingly better therefor.”

In the cipher story which is found by Mrs. Gallup in _Titus Andronicus_, Bacon again recurs to the superior merit of the plays put forth in Shakespeare’s name, and he extols the merits of Shakespeare as an interpreter of these dramas:--

“We can win bayes, lawrell gyrlo’ds and renowne, and we can raise a shining monumente which shale not suffer the hardly wonne, supremest, crowning glory to fade. Nere shal the lofty and wide-reaching honor that such workes as these bro’t us bee lost whilst there may even a work bee found to afforde opportunity to actors--who may play those powerful parts which are now soe greeted with great acclayme--to winne such names and honours as Wil Shakespear, o’ The Glob’ so well did win, acting our dramas.

“That honour must to earth’s final morn yet follow him, but al fame won from th’ authorshippe (supposed) of our plays must in good time--after our owne worke, putting away its vayling disguises, standeth forth as you (the decipherer) only know it--bee yeelded to us.”

If Mr. Mallock reposes any confidence in his Bacon--according to Mrs. Gallup--he must at once withdraw his description of Shakespeare as a “notoriously ill-educated actor.” Bacon himself, in the foregoing, acknowledges that Will Shakespeare derived a well-won reputation and honours by acting in his dramas. At the same time Bacon is confident that the dramas will win for him, as author, “supremest, crowning, and unfading glory.”

Here, almost at the outset of these cipher revelations, we are met by a passage, plausible in itself, but which, read in the light of our knowledge of Bacon’s doubts upon the permanency of the English language, calls for careful consideration. Bacon rested his fame upon his Latin writings. He wrote always for the appreciation of posterity. As he advanced in years, he appears, says Abbott, to have been more and more impressed with the hopelessness of any expectations of lasting fame or usefulness based upon English books. He believed implicitly that posterity would not preserve works written in the modern languages--“for these modern languages will at one time or other play the bank-rowtes (bankrupts) with books.” Of his Latin translation of the _Advancement of Learning_, he said, “It is a book I think will live, and be a citizen of the world, as English books will not,” and he predicted that the Latin volume of his _Essays_ would “last as long as books shall last.” So confident was he that his writings would achieve immortality, that he dedicated his _Advancement of Learning_ to the King, in order that the virtues and mental qualities of his Majesty might be handed down to succeeding ages in “some solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument.” Bacon’s pride in his work was monumental, his “grasp on futurity” was conceived in a spirit of “magnificent audacity;” every scrap of his writings was jealously preserved and robed in the time-resisting garments of a dead language. Is it conceivable in this magnificent egoist that he should have displayed such gross carelessness, such wanton unconcern in his plays that, but for the labours of a couple of actors in collecting and arranging them, they would have been utterly lost? It is simply incredible that Bacon should have based his anticipation of immortality upon plays which for years were tossed about the world in pirated and mutilated editions, and in many instances, until the issue of the first folio in 1623, existed only in the form of the actor’s prompt books. The sixteen plays, in quarto, which were in print in 1616, were published without the co-operation of the author. They were to win for their author unfading glory, yet he was at no pains to collect them. The first folio was printed from the acting versions in use by the company with which Shakespeare had been associated, and the editorial duties were undertaken by two of Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors, whose motives rather than their literary fitness for the task call for commendation. It was dedicated to two noblemen, with whom, so far as we know, Bacon had no social or political intercourse.

Mr. Theobald considers that Bacon’s “confident assurance of holding a lasting place in literature,” his anticipation of immortality, could only have been advanced by the man who voiced the same conviction in the Shakespeare _Sonnets_. The deduction is based on arbitrary conjecture, and a limited acquaintance with the literary conceits of the time. But Shakespeare claimed as his medium of immortality the language which Bacon predicted could not endure.

“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see--
So long lives this, and this gives life to Thee,”

wrote Shakespeare. This was English, the purest and the sweetest that tongue ever uttered, and Bacon was dressing his thoughts in Latin that they might outlive the language which Shakespeare wrote. Ronsard and Desportes, in France, and in England, Drayton, Daniel, and, indeed, all the Elizabethan poets, had made the topic a commonplace. In his _Apologie for Poetrie_, Sir Philip Sidney wrote that it was the custom of poets “to tell you that they will make you immortal by their verses,” and both Shakespeare and Bacon adopted the current conceit when they referred to the “eternising” faculty of their literary effusions. It is not claimed by, or for, Bacon that he was the author of Drayton’s _Idea_ or Daniel’s _Delia_, but if Mr. Theobald’s style of reasoning is to be taken at his own valuation, the master of Gorhambury, and none other, was responsible for the poetic output of both these singers.

_Bacon’s “Sterne and Tragicle History.”_

We are assured by another Baconian student that the Shakespeare plays were not an end, but merely a means to an end, the end being the revelation of Bacon’s history, and the composition of further plays and poems from the material which he had warehoused in the dramas attributed to Shakespeare and other authors. The initial, and most important fact which Mrs. Gallup’s deciphered story reveals, is, not that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays, but that he was the legitimate son of Queen Elizabeth, by Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester. The disclosure is so startling, so quaint, so incredible, and withal so interesting, that the revelation both appeals to and outrages our credulity. From our knowledge of Elizabeth and of Bacon, we can more readily believe that the Queen was the mother of Bacon, than that Bacon was the father of Shakespeare’s plays. At Gorhambury is to be seen a pair of oil paintings, by Hilliard, of Elizabeth and Leicester. The pictures are a match in size, style, and treatment. The doublet in which Leicester is portrayed is of the same material as that of the gown in which the Queen is represented. Moreover, they were a present from Elizabeth to Sir Nicholas Bacon, the foster father of Francis, who signs his cipher revelations, “Francis First of England,” “Francis Bacon (Rightful) R,” “F.B. or T.” or “Francis of E.”, as the humour seized him.

The deciphered secret story, the “sterne and tragicle” history of Bacon’s political wrongs commences in the first edition of Edmund Spenser’s _Complaints_ (1590 and 1591); but it was not until the _Faerie Queene_ was published (1596) that he appropriates the authorship of Spenser’s works. His first care is to establish his claim to the throne:

“Our name is Fr. Bacon, by adoption, yet it shall be different. Being of blood roial (for the Queen, our sov’raigne, who married by a private rite the Earle Leicester--and at a subseque’t time, also, as to make surer thereby, without pompe, but i’ th’ presence o’ a suitable number of witnesses, bound herselfe by those hymeneall bands againe--is our mother, and wee were not base-born, or base-begot), we be Tudor, and our stile shall be Francis First, in all proper cours of time, th’ King of our realme.

“Early in our life, othe (oath)--or threat as binding in effect as othe, we greatly doubt--was made by our wilful parent concerning succession, and if this cannot bee chang’d, or be not in time withdrawn, we know not how the kingdome shall be obtain’d. But ’tis thus seene or shewn that it can bee noe other’s by true desce’t, then is set down. To Francis First doth th’ crowne, th’ honor of our land belong....”

Thus Bacon states his case, and through the succeeding 368 pages of Mrs. Gallup’s book he repeats the assertion _ad nauseam_. He makes no attempt to prove his claim--he early allows it to be understood that he is unable to verify his asseverations, nor does he explain how or why his name should be Tuder, or Tidder. As the son of Lord Robert Dudley, he would be a Dudley. The circumstantial evidence with which he supports his case is interesting, but valueless; his conclusions are unproven, his facts are something more than shaky. But let us pursue the story:

“We, by men call’d Bacon, are sonne of the Sov’raigne, Queene Elizabeth, who confin’d i’ th’ Tow’r, married Ro. D.”

Elizabeth, it appears, was once “so mad daring” as to dub Bacon, “as a sonne of Follie,” to “th’ courageous men of our broadland.” But--

“No man hath claime to such pow’r as some shal se in mighty England, after th’ decease of Virgin Queene E---- by dull, slow mortalls, farre or near, loved, wooed like some gen’rously affected youth-loving mayden, whylst she is both wife to th’ noble lord that was so sodainly cut off in his full tide and vigour of life and mothe’--in such way as th’ women of the world have groaninglie bro’t foorth, and must whilst Nature doth raigne--of two noble sonnes, Earle of Essex, trained up by Devereux, and he who doth speake to you, th’ foster sonne of two wel fam’d frie’ds o’ th’ Que., Sir Nichola’ Bacon, her wo’thie adviser and counsellor, and that partne’ of loving labor and dutie, my most loved Lady Anne Bacon....”

“... My mother Elizabeth ... join’d herselfe in a union with Robert Dudley whilst th’ oath sworne to one as belov’d yet bound him. I have bene told hee aided in th’ removall of this obstructio’, when turni’g on that narrowe treach’rous step, as is naturall, shee lightly leaned upon th’ raile, fell on th’ bricks--th’ paving of a court--and so died.”

“In such a sonne,” Bacon proceeds, “th’ wisest our age thus farr hath shewen--pardon, prithee, so u’seemly a phrase, I must speake it heere--th’ mother should lose selfish vanitie, and be actuated only by a desire for his advancement.”

Bacon is confident that the Queen would have acknowledged his claims but for the advice of a “fox seen at our court in th’ form and outward appearance of a man named Robbert Cecill, the hunchback,” who poisoned Elizabeth’s mind against her “sonne of Follie.” Both “Francis Tudor” (or Tidder), and his brother Essex, the “wrong’d enfan’s of a Queene,” learned that their “royall aspirations” were to receive “a dampening, a checke soe great, it co’vinc’d both, wee were hoping for advanceme’t we might never attaine.”

The “royall aspirations” of the Earl of Essex were cut short by the sentence of death that was passed upon him by “that _mère_ and my owne counsel. Yet this truth must at some time be knowne; had not I allow’d myselfe to give some countenance to th’ arraingement, a subsequent triall, as wel as th’ sentence, I must have lost th’ life that I held so pricelesse.” And Bacon, or Francis Tidder, solaces himself, and condones his part in the deed with the reflection that, “Life to a schola’ is but a pawne for mankind.”

Queen Elizabeth, Bacon tells us, though already wedded “secretly to th’ Earle, my father, at th’ Tower of London, was afterwards married at the house of Lord P----....”

Briefly, then, we have it, on the authority of the cipher translation, that “Bacon was the son of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, who were married in the Tower between 1554 and 1558. Leicester’s wife did not meet with her fatal accident until 1560. Bacon was born in January, 1561. His parents were subsequently re-married, at a date not stated, at the house of Lord P----.”

In 1611 (_Shepheard’s Calendar_) Bacon declares “Ended is now my great desire to sit in British throne. Larger worke doth invite my hand than majestie doth offer; to wield th’ penne dothe ever require a greater minde then to sway the royall scepter. Ay, I cry to th’ Heavenly Ayde, ruling ore all, ever to keepe my soule thus humbled and contente.” But in 1613 (_Faerie Queene_), he says, that “in th’ secrecy o’ my owne bosome, I do still hold to th’ faith that my heart has never wholly surrendered, that truth shall come out of error, and my head be crowned ere my line o’ life be sever’d. How many times this bright dreeme hath found lodgement in my braine!... It were impossible, I am assurr’d, since witnesses to th’ marriage, and to my birth (after a proper length of time) are dead, and the papers certifying their presence being destroyed, yet is it a wrong that will rise, and crye that none can hush.” In 1620 (_Novum Organum_) he has lost his “feare, lest my secret bee s’ented forth by some hound o’ Queen Elizabeth;” but “the jealousy of the King is to be feared, and that more in dread of effecte on the hearts of the people, then any feare of th’ presentation of my claime, knowing as he doth, that all witnesses are dead, and the requir’d documents destroy’d.”

Bacon, according to the cipher, was sixteen years of age when he learned the truth of his parentage through the indiscretion of one “th’ ladies o’ her (the Queen’s) train, who foolish to rashnesse did babble such gossip to him as she heard at the Court.” Bacon, it seems, taxed the Queen forthwith with her motherhood of him, and Elizabeth, with “much malicious hatred” and “in hastie indignation,” said:

“You are my own borne sonne, but you, though truly royall, of a fresh, a masterlie spirit, shall rule not England, or your mother, nor reigne on subjects yet t’ bee. I bar from succession forevermore my best beloved first borne that bless’d my unio’ with--no, I’ll not name him, nor need I yet disclose the sweete story conceal’d thus farre so well, men only guesse it, nor know o’ a truth o’ th’ secret marriages, as rightfull to guard the name o’ a Queene, as of a maid o’ this realm. It would well beseeme you to make such tales sulk out of sight, but this suiteth not t’ your kin’ly spirit. A sonne like mine lifteth hand nere in aide to her who brought him foorth; hee’d rather uplift craven maides who tattle thus whenere my face (aigre enow ev’r, they say) turneth from them. What will this brave boy do? Tell a, b, c’s?”

“Weeping and sobbing sore,” Bacon hurries to Mistres Bacon’s chamber and entreats her to assure him that he is “the sonne of herselfe and her honored husband.... When, therefore, my sweet mother did, weeping and lamenting, owne to me that I was in very truth th’ sonne o’ th’ Queene, I burst into maledictio’s ’gainst th’ Queene, my fate, life, and all it yieldeth.... I besought her to speak my father’s name.... She said, ‘He is the Earle of Leicester.... I tooke a solemne oath not to reveale your storie to you, but you may hear my unfinish’d tale to th’ end and if you will, go to th’ midwife. Th’ doctor would be ready also to give proofes of your just right to be named th’ Prince of this realm, and heire-apparent to the throne. Nevertheless, Queen Bess did likewise give her solemn oath of bald-faced deniall of her marriage to Lord Leicester, as well as to her motherhood. Her oath, so broken, robs me of a sonne. O Francis, Francis, breake not your mother’s hearte. I cannot let you go forth after all the years you have beene the sonne o’ my heart. But night is falling. To-day I cannot speak to you of so weighty a matter. This hath mov’d you deeply, and though you now drie your eyes, you have yet many teare marks upon your little cheeks. Go now; do not give it place i’ thought or word; a brain-sick woman, though she be a Queene, can take my sonne from me.’” So Bacon leaves her, not to search for the midwife, or cross-question the doctor, but to “dreame of golden scepters, prou’ courts, and by-and-bye a crowne on mine innocent brow.”

All Bacon’s confessions, if true, prove him to have been a bastard, but this logical and inevitable conclusion he repeatedly denies. He claims his mother’s name, and for his father, a nobleman whose wife was living at the time of his bigamous marriage with Elizabeth. If the marriage was valid, why were Leicester and the Queen re-married at the house of Lord P., and in what year did the second ceremony take place? But although anti-Baconians maintain that Bacon was not a fool, and therefore could not have seriously advanced such claims; that if he had done so he would have made a more plausible story of his wrongs; that he was not a dunce, and therefore could not have written the “maudlin and illiterate drivel” attributed to him by Mrs. Gallup, it is still inconceivable that this cipher story is a gigantic fraud. Mr. Andrew Lang, who makes no doubt that Mrs. Gallup has honourably carried out her immense task of deciphering, has arrived at the conclusion that Bacon was obviously mad.

_Bacon, the Author of all Elizabethan-Jacobean Literature._

But interesting as it is to find in Bacon yet another and hitherto an unsuspected pretender to the throne of England, his pretensions to the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a feature of even more dazzling interest. His reasons for denying the authorship while he lived have hitherto demanded a great deal of speculative explanation. The general theory of the Baconites is that Bacon concealed his authorship of the plays because such writing was held in low esteem, or as Mr. Sinnett puts it, Bacon “shrank from compromising his social reputation by any open connection with the despised vocation of the playwright.” The difficulty of accepting this assumption has hitherto been found in the fact that there was no reason why Bacon should have confined himself to the writing of plays. In the case of Shakespeare, it was quite understandable, for he was an actor, and the stage was his livelihood. Bacon, on the other hand, had no love for the theatre; he looked upon play-acting as a toy, and masques as things unworthy of serious observations. The tone of his comments is contemptuous, and his criticism discloses a lack of knowledge and interest in the subject. Why should this man, who regarded the stage with ill-concealed repugnance, have written plays which he was ashamed to own, while all imaginative literature was open to him. The stigma which it is erroneously alleged was attached to play-writing was not associated with poetry; if the playwright was under a ban, the poet was on the pedestal. There must have been a more tangible reason for Bacon’s concealment, but we have had to wait for Mrs. Gallup’s book to disclose it. Bacon’s object in writing was to unfold the secrets of his birth and to ventilate his wrongs; he chose plays as his medium because, like Mr. George Bernard Shaw, he found blank verse easier to write than prose. He employed the pseudonyms of Greene and Peele, and the pen name of Marlowe ere taking that of Wm. Shakespeare as his masque or vizard, “that we should remayne unknowne, inasmuch as wee, having worked in drama, history that is most vig’rously supprest, have put ourselfe soe greatly in dange’ that a word unto Queene Elizabeth, without doubt, would give us a sodaine horriblle end--an exit without re-entrance--for in truth she is authoress and preserve’ of this, our being.”

Bacon’s first claim to authorship, apart from the works which were issued under his own name, is to be found, according to the cipher, in the 1596 edition of the _Faerie Queene_:

“E. Sp. could not otherwise so easilie atchieve honours that pertyne to ourself. Indeed, this would alone crowne his head, if this were all--I speake not of golden crowne, but of lawrell--for our pen is dipt deepe into th’ muses’ pure source.”

The first mention of Shakespeare as Bacon’s masque appears in the J. Roberts’ edition (1600) of _Sir John Oldcastle_ and _The Merchant of Venice_:

“See or read. In the stage-plaies, two, the oldest or earliest devices prove these twentie plays to have been put upon our stage by the actor that is suppos’d to sell dramas of value, yet ’tis rightlie mine owne labour.”

In the _Advancement of Learning_ (1605) Bacon extends his claim to embrace the works of Robert Greene, Peele, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson:

“My stage plaies have all been disguis’d (to wit, many in Greene’s name, or in Peele’s, Marlowe’s, a fewe, such as the Queen’s Masques and others of this kind published for me by Jonson, my friend and co-worker) since I relate a secret history therein, a story of so sterne and tragick qualite, it ille suited my lighte’ verse, in the earlier works.”

The only other persons who are permitted the privilege of communicating with posterity, through the medium of the cipher, are Bacon’s “friends and co-workers,” Ben Jonson and William Rawley. In the folio edition of Jonson’s plays (1616) at Bacon’s “constantly urged request,” Jonson, who had his friend’s “fame in heart as much as my honour and dignitie,” writes to the decipherer:

“It shall be noted, indeed, when you uncover his stile, my works do not all come from mine owne penne, for I shall name to you some plays that come forth fro’ Sir F. Bacon, his worthy hand or head, I bein’ but the masque behind which he was surely hid. Th’ play entitled _Sejanus_ was his drama, and th’ King’s, Queen’s, Prince’s Entertainments; the _Queen’s Masques_ are his, as also th’ short _Panegyre_.”

The Droeshout Etching, from the 1623 Folio Edition.

To the Reader.

This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Grauer had a strife
with Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he but haue drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was euer writ in brasse.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

B. I.
]

But we learn that, in addition to Jonson, “my foster-brother Anthony, my owne brother Robert, Ben Jonson, my friend, adviser and assistant, and our private secretary,” were also “cogniza’t of the work,” and indeed after Bacon’s death in 1626, William Rawley, his private secretary, took up the cipher story, and completed it in Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and in the 1635 editions of _Sylva Sylvarum_ and the _New Atlantis_. It has been objected that Bacon could not have dropped the cipher into books published after his death, but this objection “vanishes into invisibility,” as Mr. Theobald would say, when we remember that faithful old Rawley was living long after Bacon’s work had been “cut short by th’ sickel o’ death.” He bobs up serenely in _Sylva Sylvarum_, drops in another thirty pages of Bacon’s cipher lamentations, and winds up with a dozen lines of his own “to speak of th’ errata.” This last instalment was, it may be assumed, written prior to 1626, and entrusted to Rawley to make use of on the first opportunity, _i.e._, as soon as he could obtain command of the proofs of another book.

In the first folio, published twenty years after the death of Elizabeth, Bacon still appears to be affrighted by the memory of the Queen; his life would still be forfeit if his identity were discovered, “since she is my mother;” but in his valedictory address to his decipherer, he declares that it is “not feare, but disstaste of th’ unseemly talk and much curiosity of the many who read these cipher histories, that makes him still desirous to preserving his incognito.”

“My time of feare went from me with my greatness, but I still wish to avoid many questionings--and much suspicion, perchance on the side of the King, in his owne prope’ person. I have neede of the very caution which kept these secrets from the many, when my mother made me swear secrecy, and my life was the forfeit; nor may I now speake openly, yet many men for a kingdom would break their oathes.”

It is possible that Bacon may have considered that “since witnesses to th’ marriage and to my birth ... are dead, and the papers certifying their presence” were destroyed, he would have a better chance of obtaining credence for his story a few centuries hence than in his own day. His belief in the credulity of posterity did not desert him:

“But my kingdome is in immortall glory among men from generatio’ unto coming generations. An unending fame will crowne my browe, and it is farre better worthe in any true thinking mind, I am assured, than many a crowne which kings do have set on with shewe and ceremonie. Yet when I have said it, my heart is sad for the great wrong that I must for ever endure.”

Bacon appears to have foreseen that some future sceptic would question the justice of his claims; would ask, for instance, how the hand that wrote _Macbeth_ and _The Tempest_, came to produce such comparatively indifferent stuff as _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier_, and he meets the anticipated question with the following explanation:--

“It shall bee noted in truth that some greatly exceede their fellowes in worth, and it is easily explained. Th’ theame varied, yet was always a subject well selected to convey the secret message. Also the plays being given out as tho’gh written by the actor to whom each had been consigned, turne one’s genius suddainlie many times to suit th’ new man.

“In this actour that wee now emploie, is a wittie vayne different from any formerly employed. In truth it suiteth well with a native spirrit, humorous and grave by turnes in ourselfe. Therefore when we create a part that hath him in minde th’ play is correspondingly better therefor. It must be evident ... that these later dramas (this cipher message is in the 1611 quarto of _Hamlet_) are superior in nearlie all those scenes where our genius hath swaie”....

Over and over again, with almost childish iteration, the cipher repeats the names of the authors whose works he claims as his own:

“Spenser, Greene, Peele, Marlowe have sold me theirs (their names)--two or three others I have assumed upon certaine occasions such as this (Ben Jonson’s _Masques_), besides th’ one I beare among men.”...

“My plaies are not yet finisht, but I intend to put forth severall soone. However, bi-literall work requiring so much time, it will readily be seene that there is much to doe aftee a booke doth seeme to be ready for the presse, and I could not say when other plays will come out. The next volume will be under W. Shakespeare’s name. As some which have now beene 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 equall in merite.”

“My next work is not begun here: much of it shall bee found in th’ playes o’ Shakespeare which have not yet come out. We having put forth a numbe’ of plays i’ his theatre, shall continue soe doing since we doe make him th’ thrall to our will. Our name never accompanieth anie play, but it frequently appeareth plainly in cipher for witty minds to transla’e from Latine and Greeke....”

“This history (_The Tragical Historie of the Earl of Essex_) is contained (_i.e._, hidden in cipher) in some stage plays that came out in Shakespeare’s name. Ere long there will be many of like stile, purpose and scope added thereto, which shall both ayd and instruct you in th’ work. This should make it cleare, _e.g._, sixty stage-plays which, in varyi’g stiles that are contrary to my owne well-known stile of expression, whylst for more of our lighter work an impenetrable mask, for a history, much too varied: hence these great plays have been devis’d which, being similar, often held this inne’ history therein unsuspected....”

“Several comedies, which be now strangers, as might be said, bearing at th’ most such titles ’mongst the plaiers as they would remember, but th’ author’s name in disguise, if it bee seen at all, will, as soone as may be found toward and propitious, be publisht by Shakespeare, _i.e._, in his name, having masqued thus manie of the best plaies that we have beene able to produce. To these we are steadily making additions, writing from two to six stage plays every year....”

“All that learne that I, who accompte th’ truth better than wicked vanitie, publish’d manie late playes under other cognomen will think the motive some distaste of the stage. In noe respect is it true....” His real reason is, firstly, that “all men who write stage-playes are held in co’tempte,” and, secondly, the plays are employed to “send out much hidden dang’rous matter.” “In my plays matters are chosen not alone for value as a subject to heare and no longer heed. Each play is the meane or th’ medium, by which cipher histories are sent forth.”

“Severall small works under no name wonne worthy praise; next in Spenser’s name, also, they ventured into an unknowne world. When I, at length, having written in diverse stiles, found three who, for sufficient reward in gold added to an immediate renowne as good pens, willingly put forth all workes which I had compos’d I was bolder....”

“Th’ evidence such plays give of being from the brayne of one who hath for manie years made himself acquainted with th’ formes and th’ methode--or art--of this dramatick or representative poetry, maketh also my claime to other workes, which have beene publisht in various names, undeniable. The worke, despight a variety of styles, is mine owne....”

The Chandos Portrait.]

“So few (plays) can bee put forth as first written without a slighte revision, and many new being also made ready, my penne hath little or noe rest. I am speaking of those plaies that were suppos’d Wm. Shakespeare’s....”

“... small portions (of the cipher story) being used at one time, sometimes in our Spenser’s name, Marlowe’s, Peele’s, and Shakespeare’s, anon Greene’s, mine, also Ben Jonson’s, affording our diverse masques another colour, as ’twere, to baffle all seekers, to which we shall add Burton’s....”

“Th’ worke beareth the title of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and will bee put forth by Burton.”

Here is Bacon’s announcement of the publication of the First Folio:

“In our plaies ... being in the name of a man not living, there is still more of this secret historie.... We have not lost that maske tho’ our Shakespeare no longer liveth, since twoo others, fellowes of our play actor--who would, we doubt not, publish those plays--would disguise our work as well....”

“Our plaies are of diverse kindes--historie, comedie, and tragedie. Many are upon th’ stage, but those already put forth in Wm. Shakespeare’s name, we doe nothing doubt, have won a lasting fame,--comedy, th’ historick drama and tragedy, are alike in favour....”

“My best playes, at present, as William Shakespeare’s work fost’red, will as soone as one more plaie be completed, weare a fine but yet a quiet dresse, as is seemely in plaies of as much valew and dignity as sheweth cleerly therein, and be put foorth in folio enlarged and multiplyed as th’ history conceal’d within th’ comedies, histories, or tragedies required.”

Then follows a number of further recapitulations of his masques:

“Francis of Verulam is author of all the plays heretofore published by Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Shakespeare, and of the two-and-twenty now put out for the first time. Some are altered to continue his history....”

“Next write a comedy, a quaint device for making knowne th’ men that do give, lend, sell, or in anie othe’ waye, have put me into possession of their names. These I have us’d as disguises that my name might not bee seen attached to any poem, stage-play, or anie of th’ light workes o’ this day....”

“As I have often said ... you have poems and prose workes on divers theames in all such various stiles, as are put before th’ world as Greene’s, as Shakespeare’s, Burto’s, as Peele’s, Spenser’s, as Marlowe’s, as Jonso’ dramas ... for I varied my stile to suit different men, since no two shew th’ same taste and like imagination....”

“Any play publisht as Marlowe’s, came from th’ same source as all which you will now work out....”

“Greene, Spense’, Peele, Shakespeare, Burton, and Marley, as you may somewhere see it, or, as it is usually given, Marlowe, have thus farre been my masques....”

“A few workes also beare th’ name o’ my friend, Ben Jonson--these are _Sejanus_ and th’ _Masques_, used to conceale the Iliads chiefly and to make use o’ my newe cipher....”

“I masqued manie grave secrets in my poems which I have publisht, now as Peele’s or Spenser’s, now as my owne, then againe in th’ name of authours, so cald, who plac’d workes of mixt sort before a reading world, prose and poetry. To Robt. Greene did I entruste most of that work....”

Bacon has limited our speculations upon the extent of his literary work by definitely mentioning the works which he wrote in a cipher discovered by Dr. Owen:

“We will enumerate them by their whole titles
From the beginning to the end: William Shakespeare,
Robert Greene, George Peele, and Christopher Marlowe’s
Stage plays; _The Faerie Queen_, _Shepherd’s Calendar_,
And all the works of Edmund Spenser;
_The Anatomy of Melancholy_ of Robert Burton,
_The History of Henry VII._, _The Natural History_,
_The Interpretation of Nature_, _The Great Instauration_,
_Advancement of Learning_, _The De Augmentis Scientiarum_,
_Our Essays_, and all the other works of our own.”

Even when we note that the _Advancement_ and _De Augmentis_ are the English and Latin versions of the same work--a fact that Dr. Owen appears to have overlooked--Mr. Theobald must acknowledge that this represents a very fair literary output, but it does not form the full list of his works. The names of his cipher or interiour works, are enumerated by Mrs. Gallup:

“There are five histories as followes: _The Life o’ Elizabeth_, _The Life of Essex_, _The White Rose o’ Britaine_, _The Life and Death of Edward Third_, _The Life of Henry th’ Seventh_; five tragedies: _Mary Queene o’ Scots_, _Robert th’ Earl o’ Essex_ (my late brother), _Robert th’ Earle o’ Leicester_ (my late father), _Death o’ Marlowe_, _Ann Bullen_; three comedies: _Seven Wise Men o’ th’ West_, _Solomon th’ Second_, _The Mouse-Trap_.”

_Bacon and “Divine Aide.”_

Bacon himself appears to have been struck with the immensity of his production, and he cast about for some plausible explanation that would justify it in the eyes of his twentieth century admirers. Human endurance and fecundity would, he foresaw, be regarded as unequal to the strain--Divine assistance alone could make so colossal a task possible:

“Whosoever may question assertions that tend to shew y’ mankinde evidences of a Divine thought interfusing th’ human minde, hath but to prove it by experiment. He would not bee ready to cavil, or laugh to scorn this assertion, which I may repeate anon, that Divine aide was given me in my work. I have, at th’ least, accomplished a great work in fewe yeares, work of such a difficult nature that no one hand could accomplish, except other than myselfe upheld or directed it.” And “anon,” he repeats, “surely my hand and braine have but short rest. I firmly believe it were not in the power of humane beings to do anie more than I have done, yet I am but partlie satisfied.”

These excerpts, which have been given at some length, disclose not only the exact nature and extent of the alleged claims, but the style and manner in which they are couched. There is nothing of the literary polish and elegance in the cipher writing which we find in all of Bacon’s acknowledged works, but taking into consideration the difficulties of dropping the cipher into the books in which it is said to appear, and the even greater difficulties of interpreting it, it seems manifestly unfair to dismiss the entire thing as an imposture on that account. Mr. Mallock’s contention is that Mrs. Gallup’s theory is sufficiently plausible to merit it an unprejudiced investigation. If the cipher proves to be altogether false, the manner in which it has been elaborated will, Mr. Mallock submits, form a curious incident in literary history; while should it prove true, it will be more curious still. Apart from the cipher, Mr. Sinnett declares, there are floods of reasons for disbelieving that Shakespeare could have written the plays. Mr. Sinnett, and the other leaders of the Baconian cult, do not appear to see that if their theory is to outlast the present controversy, the cipher business must be thrown overboard forthwith.

As Mr. William Archer has said with reference to these ciphers, the point at issue is as plain as a pike-staff. We are not concerned, while we deal with this phase of the subject, in the verbal parallels between Shakespeare’s writings and those of Bacon, nor with the vehemently expressed conviction of students and scholars that Bacon did not write _Shakespeare_. All we desire to know is whether the ciphers which Mrs. Gallup and Dr. Owen contend are contained in certain books (the _First Folio Shakespeare_ among others) really exist. Mr. Mallock says that until an examination by experts in typography has negatived this theory, he is inclined to believe it. His position is unassailable. Nothing further can be argued or asserted (with conviction) until a committee of experts have made their report. If they declare that the cipher has no foundation in fact, the students who have carefully perused Mrs. Gallup’s great work--great invention it will then be--and Dr. Owen’s many volumes of badly-constructed, ridiculous plays and poems, will give both Mrs. Gallup and Dr. Owen credit for a veritable triumph of misapplied energy and endurance--for having conceived a masterpiece of diabolical inventiveness, for having revealed a perfect genius for the perpetration of literary fraud.

Personally, I do not expect to learn that they will be convicted of the possession of such an exceptional gift of deception. Their labours smack of honesty; their conclusions betray an ingenuous credulity that calls for respect. It will, indeed, surprise most people who have made a study of their works, if it is proved that the cipher they claim to have discovered, and manipulated with such marvellous results, is a myth. But assuming that a properly-constituted committee did declare that the cipher was to be found in all the books indicated, and that the investigation corroborated the revelations made by Mrs. Gallup and Dr. Owen, there would still remain the question as to who concealed the statements in the different volumes, and whether there is any truth in them.

I think, nay I claim, that in the event of the cipher being verified, and the translations being confirmed, that (_a_) The cipher could have been introduced by no other man than Bacon; and that (_b_) The whole of the statements found therein are false from beginning to end. In a searching investigation into the cipher undertaken by a correspondent of the _Times_, a single page of the cipher was tested, but the test is not, as the _Times_ claims for it, entirely convincing. The method of investigation employed is excellent. A greatly enlarged photograph is taken of a page from the _Epistle Dedicatory_ to the _Ruine of Time_ in the 1591 edition of Spenser’s _Complaints_, and the “A” and “B” letters which Mrs. Gallup herself assigns to the parts respectively are cut out and arranged in parallel columns. When these two sets of letters are seen side by side it would, indeed, be difficult for the untrained eye to distinguish any marks of dissimilarity between them. But as Mr. Mallock tells us, “although even the naked eye can be soon trained to perceive that in many cases the letters belong to different founts, yet these differences are of so minute a kind that in other cases they allude the eye without the aid of a magnifying glass; and even with the aid of a magnifying glass, the eye of the amateur, at all events, remains doubtful, and unable to assign the letters to this alphabet or to that.” The correspondent of the _Times_ leads us to infer that he has been unable to verify the existence of the cipher in the page he has tested, and Mr. Lee has declared, without hesitation, that the cipher does not exist in the Shakespeare First Folio. On the other hand, Mr. Mallock had little difficulty in distinguishing the different founts in the facsimiles from the _Novum Organum_ and Spenser’s _Complaints_. He experimented with a large number of passages, and comparing his interpretation with that of Mrs. Gallup, he found that it coincided with hers, sometimes in four cases out of seven, and not infrequently in five. “It appears to me,” Mr. Mallock writes, “to be almost inconceivable that multiplied coincidences such as these can be the work of chance, or that they can originate otherwise than in the fact that in these pages at all events--the preface to the _Novum Organum_, printed in 1620, and in the Dedication of Spenser’s _Complaints_, printed in 1591--a bi-literal cipher exists, in both cases the work of Bacon; and if such a cipher really exists here, the probabilities are overwhelming that Mrs. Gallup is right, and that we shall find it existing in the first folio of Shakespeare also.”

_Shakespeare and Bacon in Collaboration._

Bacon’s ciphers, which were, according to the evidence adduced from the bi-literal, six in number, grew one out of the other. Bacon evidently expected the bi-literal to be discovered first, for in this cipher he explains the word-cipher, in which his hidden, or “interiour” works are concealed. Dr. Owen discovered this word-cipher without the aid of the bi-literal, and by following its directions he has deciphered over a thousand pages of blank verse, comprising _Letters to the Decipherer_, _A Description of Queen Elizabeth_, a poem entitled _The Spanish Armada_, _An Account of Bacon’s Life in France_, and several plays. In the _Epistle to the Decipherer_, Bacon says, “For thirty-three years have we gone in travail, with these, the children of our wit,” and proceeds to adjure the unknown to

“Sware by my sword never to speak of this
That you have found while we do live;”

and again--

“Sweare never to publish that we conceal under the names
Of others our own till we are dead,
Sweare never to reveal the secret cipher words
That guide your steps from part to part,
Nor how it is gathered, joined or put together,
Till we be dead, so help you God!”

The chief point to be noted about these cipher stories, biographies and plays is that they are built up of quotations from the works of all the authors whose writings Bacon claims to be his own. Dr. Owen asks us, in all seriousness, to believe that Bacon composed the plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Peel, and Greene, and the poems by Spenser, as they appear in the cipher translation, and that he subsequently “decomposed and composed them again” for circulation in his own day, under the names of the various authors who acted as his masques. “When deciphered and replaced in their original form,” Dr. Owen asserts, “they _mean something_ which they _do not_ in the plays.” Such a statement, as anyone can prove by turning to these curious deciphered books, is both fallacious and absurd.

Let us see what these passages which _mean nothing_ in the plays mean in the cipher stories. The pledge which Hamlet imposes upon Horatio and Marcellus after the interview with the ghost is a serviceable case in point. Hamlet’s words are almost too familiar to need repeating:

“So help you mercy, that how strange
Or odd soe’er I bear myself--
As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on--
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber’d thus, or this head shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As ‘Well, well, we know;’--or ‘We could, and if we would;’
Or ‘If we list to speak;’--or, ‘There be, an if they might:’--
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me;--This not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.”

No one can question the fitness and perfect appropriateness of the foregoing passage in _Hamlet_, but it is doubtful if anybody, other than Dr. Owen, will recognise their cogency when they are addressed by Bacon to his unknown decipherer.

Bacon declares that Bottom’s recital of his dream, which commences,

“The eye of man hath not heard,
The ear of man hath not seen,”

is

“Simply and plainly, the ingenious means of writing
Without creating suspicion;”

and he goes on to explain that the decipherer can, by changing

“The words from one end to another, make it read aright.”

Bacon heartens his timorous decipherer with the words, “Be thou not, therefore, afraid of greatness”--the greatness that he will attain as the reward of his decipherations. “Some,” he assures the unknown, in the memorable words, “have greatness thrust upon them,” and he further reminds him that

“There is a tide in the affairs of man,
Which taken at the flood,
Leads on to glorious fortune.”

“Nature and fortune joined to make you great,” Bacon tells his decipherer, from the text of _King John_, and one can almost imagine Dr. Owen blushing with conscious pride, as he translated this borrowed gem. He implores the modest unknown to free his (Bacon’s) name from the disgraceful part he had in the death of the Earl of Essex, and cries--

“Oh, if I could
I would make a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon your soul within the house....
You should not rest
Between the elements of earth and air,
But you should pity me----”

Words full of passion and beautiful imagery when spoken by Viola, on behalf of Orsino, to the haughty and unresponsive Lady Olivia, but sheer drivel when taken as Bacon’s exhortation to the discover of his wrongs.

But one travels in this precious cipher from foolishness to foolishness--from destruction to damnation, in quick, long strides. In the _Spanish Armada_, Elizabeth receives and answers the ambassadors of the King of Spain in the words that Henry V. employs in parley with the messengers of the Dauphin. She proclaims her physical superiority to her sister in the braggart language of Faulconbridge before King John beginning

“An’ if my brother had my shape....
If my legs were two such riding rods,”

and the next dozen pages are a literal transcription of the first act of _Henry V._ A hundred pages further on we are introduced to Bacon’s brother Anthony. The brothers meet during the progress of a storm--the storm that is described in Act I. Sc. III. of _Julius Cæsar_. The scene is placed in Dover, and Bacon who

“... never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire,”

happened in the streets upon

“A common slave,” who
“Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches joined; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remained unscorched.
Against the _Citadell_ I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by
Without annoying me.”

Bacon, in his normal moods, employs the royal style of “we” and “us” when referring to himself, but in moments of agitation, when, for instance, slaves and lions promenade the thoroughfares of Dover, he drops, instinctively, like a Scotchman into his native manner. “Whilst walking thus,” he continues: