From Newsgroup: rec.puzzles
Do NOT read this post. It contains NO puzzles for the r.puzzlers.
Well; maybe one puzzle -- to wit, WHY is James composing a post of
no interest and indeed enjoining puzzlers not to waste their time?
I address that at the conclusion of this post.
A wide variety of puzzles intrigue me. The Authorship puzzle has been
solved but it is still interesting to review the evidence. And to ask WHY? -- Why do 99.3% of intelligent people reject the idea that there was an
authorship hoax, despite the amount and variety of evidence for that conclusion?
I think it's because the Hoax seems wildly unlikely:
* WHY would this great poet not advertise his true name?
* WHY did nobody reveal the hoax?
Ask Google Gemini such questions and you get four logical and common answers (though Gemini phrases them poorly and in misleading fashion). These are indeed major reasons why noblemen writing plays -- and there were several -- always kept their identity secret. BUT THERE WAS A SPECIAL REASON WHY
THE "SHAKESPEARE" HOAX HAD TO BE KEPT SECRET -- a reason that does not
appear in Gemini's summary.
Briefly, revealing the secret authorship would have been treason against
the person of Elizabetha Dei Gracia Angliae Regina etc. herself.
To understand this we must review the politics of Her Majesty's reign.
The Pope in Rome had not only excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, but had issued
a "fatwa" calling for her to be murderd. At least one Jesuit assassin had landed in England, with Catholics happy to offer him shelter,
with the intention of carrying out the Pope's order for her execution.
There was controversy about who would succeed the Virgin Queen: she was
the final Heir of Henry VIII. Would the throne pass to the heir of Henry's younger sister Mary, as Henry and Parliament had ordered? Or would the
Crown follow tradition and pass to the heir of Henry's older sister Margaret? Elizabeth herself had made it illegal to speculate on the succession!
Whichever faction was declared legitimate would have an incentive to
cooperate with any rebellion or assassination attempt against the Queen.
And of course there were still hard feelings against Henry VII, who had
usurped the throne from the legitimate Yorkist dynasty and imposed a tyranny, making the country's treasury his personal possession.
Elizabeth had two renowned Machiavellian advisors -- William Cecil and Francis Walsingham -- but she herself was cunning enough to understand the need for propaganda. Backing by the English people was absolutely essential to her reign.
She wanted her people to take pride in their Country, to have respect for the institution of Monarchy and, in particular, respect for the Tudor dynasty. Media in those days was far different from today's. Books were very
expensive and most of the English were illiterate. The theater was the
obvious and essential way to spread propaganda; under Elizabeth the theaters gained huge appeal and power.
The first four plays written by "Shakespeare', according to most traditional scholars, were the Henry VI trilogy and Richard III.
These plays extol the Lancaster Kings, whose claim Henry VII represented. Richard III in particular treats the last Yorkist King as a villain,
from whom Henry VII saves the country. This view still resonates although modern historians have a different view.
Shakespeare was most loved for his comedies and tragedies; does it seem odd that his first four plays were histories? It would not be odd if he
were commissioned by the Queen to produce propaganda. This idea -- that such plays were commissioned b the Queen for propaganda purposes -- has been
around for centuries.
If it became general knowledge that the propaganda plays were written
by a court insider, by the long-time prot|-g|- of Her Majesty, their
value as propaganda would have been reversed. It was essential to maintain
a pretense that the plays were written by a random commoner.
And Edward de Vere (who was effectively bankrupt) was paid a salary of
1000 pounds per year for an "office." There are clear inferences that this
was a salary for services rendered rather than a gift to help him restore
his noble status. (A thousand pounds was a very high salary;
the only other person with an annual royal stipend of that size
was James VI King of Scots, whose mother Elizabeth had beheaded.)
Dozens of contemporaries must have been aware of the authorship secret.
But they would have had no incentive to reveal it; it would have been
extreme discourtesy to de Vere and his family, and many would have understood it to be treason against Her Majesty.
There were, however, cryptic allusions to the true authorship: various
people enjoying the "imp of the perverse."
It is worth recalling the following:
James Dow Allen <
user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:
if we ignore ALL alleged skip ciphers and
ignore ALL alleged anagrams and ignore ALL cryptic hints from contemporaneous
documents, the evidence would STILL point very strongly to Edward de Vere being
the author of Shakespeare's works.
I was disappointed that nobody was paying enough attention to catch the "typo" in the following:
But it is still interesting to guess whether the alleged skip ciphers
and anagrams are deliberate, or just arise by chance. Littlewood's Law
is good to keep in mind:
* A person will encounter a million-to-one coincidence about once a year.
* A person will encounter a billion-to-one coincidence about once a lifetime. * A person will encounter a thousand-to-one coincidence about once an hour.
Obviously the three durations should be in approximate 1000:1000000:1 ratio. But due to a "typo" they aren't. Littlewood's Law states
* A person will encounter a million-to-one coincidence about once a MONTH.
There are several interesting writings that point to de Vere's authorship.
So far I've only mentioned this one:
TO.THE.ONLiE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSVING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H.ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTVRER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
T.T.
There are several oddities about this text, which allegedly contains
THREE (3) separate skip-ciphers! In the (unlikely?) event that there really are three distinct skip ciphers operating in this text, we should offer kudos to the composer!
Contained, via skip ciphers, in this text is a sentence which points
directly to the Sonnet's actual author, as well as the complete 16-letter name of the key person implied in the dedication.
The spelling of "only" and"onlie"
is one oddity. That word occurs 5 times in the Sonnets, twice spelled "only",
thrice "onely" and NEVER as "onlie." ("Onelie" was also a common spelling supposedly 400+ years ago when this dedication was written.
The dots after every word, perhaps to remove ambiguity if we're skipping words instead of letters in the cipher, are also an oddity. In the image URL above you can change the '1' to '2' or '3' to see other dedications by
T.T. to see that these oddities are atypical for him.
* How many individuals are mentioned on the dedication page?
* What are the 3 periods (implied by the vertical spacing) of the word-skip cipher?
(Hint: The periods are clearly implied by the actual poet's name!!)
* Can you find the 5-letter name hidden in a skip-letter cipher with period 13?
Finally: an explanation of why I post this here with nobody to enjoy the information:
In the 1971 film Harold and Maude, Maude throws the small gift Harold has just given her into a lake so she'll "always know where it is!"
I enjoy writing, but rather than hiding this short essay in a
soon-forgotten subfolder or printing it and adding the page to a heap of unsortable scrap, I place it here, in the Usenet archive, so that
I'll "always know where it is."
With friendly valedictions, I remain your humble informant,
J.D. Allen
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