Concerning the bi-literal cypher of Francis Bacon discovered in his works

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

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’s Faerie Queene and 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 his De Augmentis, or those 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 special type, 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 the Anatomy of Melancholy called 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 called The 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 night