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

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

London.

BACON—SHAKESPEARE.

To the Editor of the Times:

Sir:—Many of the writers who, in your own columns and elsewhere, have been lately expressing their views with regard to the bi-literal Cipher alleged to exist in the First Folio of Shakespeare have spoken of me as a convert to Mrs. Gallup’s theory. I am not so. I am a convert only to the view that her theory is sufficiently plausible to deserve to have its truth tested. Regarded as a subject of inquiry, its great merit lies in the fact that its truth or falsehood can be ascertained by purely mechanical means, such as photographic enlargements of the text, coupled with a systematic examination of them. I stated this opinion in my article in the Nineteenth Century. Pending such an examination, which I intend to undertake myself, other arguments appear to me a waste of time. They are like arguments as to whether a piece of plate has been hidden in a locked-up cupboard, when the sensible course to pursue is to pick the lock and see. Mr. Sidney Lee’s letters seem to me to contain little but statements—no doubt true—as to the extent of his own learning, and urbane intimations that all persons who differ from him are half-witted monomaniacs. With regard to the general question of the authorship of the Shakespeare Plays the monomaniacs are those who consider any doubt of Shakespeare’s authorship unreasonable. The main grounds on which, so far as I know, a doubt of his authorship rests are grounds which suggest themselves to the common sense of an ordinary man of the world, and arise from the few details ascertainable with regard to Shakespeare’s life, as put before us by writers like Mr. Lee himself. The mere genius displayed in the Plays offers no difficulty. The difficulty consists in the kind of knowledge displayed in them. This simple fact Mr. Lee seems wholly unable to appreciate, as the illustrations he adduces in your issue of December 27 show. He says that to doubt that Shakespeare wrote the Plays ascribed to him is like entertaining a similar doubt with regard to Keats or Dickens, because both these writers, like Shakespeare, the butcher’s son, were also born in comparatively humble circumstances. The whole point of the question escapes Mr. Lee altogether. The poetry of Keats displays no knowledge whatever the possession of which would be singular in a person situated as he was, and having similar tastes; whilst the knowledge displayed in the works of Dickens is not only not inconsistent with what we know of his life, but is, alike in its extent and its limitations, an accurate reflection of his opportunities for observation, and of his experiences. It is precisely because the case of Shakespeare, in this respect, instead of being parallel to that of Keats and Dickens, as Mr. Lee supposes, is in striking contrast to it that a doubt as to the possibility of his having written the works ascribed to him has arisen; and if Mr. Lee does not understand this initial fact—as it would seem he does not—he is, as yet, despite all his scholarship, hardly in a position to describe the doubts of those who differ from him as groundless. It is perfectly true that the question has another side. Mr. Lee’s error lies in his assumption that it has only one side.

With regard to his boast that he has collated 25 copies of the First Folio, this fact is altogether irrelevant unless he has collated them with a view to examining the forms of the Italic letters used, with a view to testing the truth of Mrs. Gallup’s theory. This, I gather, he has not done, for the simple reason that he does not seem to have taken the trouble to inform himself accurately what her theory is. He tells us that the Roman type employed in the First Folio is all from one fount, as if this fact touched the position of Mrs. Gallup; whereas what Mrs. Gallup alleges is that the Cipher is confined entirely to the Italic portions of the text, and that the other portions have nothing whatever to do with it. If he had said that he thought the question not worth inquiring into, his position would have been quite intelligible; but to express, as he has done, a vehement opinion with regard to it, without having given it more than a passing and prejudiced attention, is not a course which reflects much credit on his critical judgment.

For myself, I should be prepared to accept one solution of the problem or the other with the same equanimity. Either, in its own way, would be equally interesting. If Mrs. Gallup’s theory is altogether false, the manner in which it has been elaborated will form a curious incident in literary history. Should it prove true, it will be more curious still. But what strikes me principally in this controversy is the odd sentimental acerbity with which the upholders of Shakespeare’s authorship receive the arguments of those who presume to entertain a doubt of it. Shakespeare is a figure of interest to us only because we assume him to have written the works that bear his name. What we know of him otherwise tends to quench interest rather than arouse it. What reason is there, other than the most foolish form of school-girl sentiment, for resenting the idea of a transference of our admiration of the author of the Plays from a man who is personally a complete stranger to us—or at best a not very reputable acquaintance—to a man who is universally admitted to be one of the greatest geniuses who have ever appeared at any period of the world’s history?

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
W. H. Mallock.

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CYPHER.

To the Editor of the Times:

Sir:—Since you have allowed a critic of Mrs. Gallup’s interpretation of the “Bi-literal Cipher” to cast discredit on the whole of her work on the strength of having discovered (what he thinks) one flaw in it, surely you will allow a believer in “the Bacon-Shakespeare craze” to put forward a few words in reference to the “Shakespeare-Stratford superstition.”