The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined
An analysis of cryptographic systems used as evidence that some author other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays commonly attributed to him

The authors address theories, which, through the identification of hidden codes, call the authorship of Shakespeare's plays into question.

William F. Friedman (Author), Elizabeth S. Friedman (Author)

9780521141390, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 April 2011

334 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.9 cm, 0.43 kg

William and Elizebeth Friedman were both researchers in cryptography at The Riverbank Laboratories. This 1957 book is the result of an insightful report that won the Friedmans the Folger Shakespeare Library literary prize. Within it, the Friedmans address theories, which, through the identification of hidden codes, call the authorship of Shakespeare's plays into question. As ciphers were abundantly used in the sixteenth century, such coding is far from impossible. Accordingly, this work gives a fair and scientific hearing to those anti-Stratfordians whose theories were often dismissed completely. The Friedmans document the history and foundations of such theories, before thoroughly examining and critiquing a great number of them. Indeed, it has even been suggested that this text itself contains ciphers, making it of even greater interest to scholars of literary codes and cryptography, as well as those wishing to discover more about the various debates surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.

Preface
List of illustrations
Introduction
1. The great controversy
2. Cryptology as a science
3. Ignatius Donnelly and the The Great Cryptogram
4. The cipher in the epitaph
5. Dr Owen and his Word Cipher
6. A miscellany
7. Acrostics and anagrams
8. The long word and other anagrams
9. The String Cipher of William Stone Booth
10. Walter Conrad Arensberg
11. The strange story of Dr Cunningham and Maria Bauer
12. Odd numbers
13. The Biliteral Cipher and Elizabeth Wells Gallup
14. Mrs Gallup and Colonel Fabyan
15. Elizabethan printing and its bearing on the Biliteral Cipher
16. A study of the Gallup decipherments
17. General Cartier and the Biliteral Cipher
18. The Biliteral Cipher: experiments and deductions
19. Conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]