VEPY STREAKY BACON.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7383, 8 February 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

VEPY STREAKY BACON.

WROTE SHAKESPEARE, AND WAS QUEEN ELIZABETH'S SON.

Shakespeare students had hoped that Donnelly's great cryptogram was the last word on the stale Bacon controversy, but a lady, Mrs Gallup, also an American, has completely out-Don ellied Donnelly, and with a keen scent for ciphers and Bacon has discovered not only that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, but that Quemi Elizabeth was the wife of Leicester, and Bacon and Essex were their sons. Not only has she made this discovery, but she has persuaded Mr W. H. Mallock, the author of the New Republic, to abandon his position of "apathetic distrust" and to plead in the "Nineteenth Century" for a careful investigation of tne theory propounded in her book "The. Biliteral Cypher of Francis Bacon."

Mrs Gallup had come to England to examine certain rare old books in order to assist a friend in the elucidation of a word cipher alleged to be Bacon's, and to exist in the Shakespearian plays. In Bacon's "De Augmentis Scientiarum" she [ found a treatise on ciphers, in whicl^ Bacon described a biliteral cipher which he claimed to have invented himself. In it each letter of the alphabet is represented by a combination of only two letters, thus "a" is represented by a a a a a, "b" by a a a a b, and so ion. The idea flashed upon Mrs Gallup that the biliteral cypher had been described by its inventor with some special ulterior purpose, and might possibly be found co-existing in Shakespearian plays with the others. In the celebrated first folio of Shakespeare she claims to have found one of Bacion's many secret writings in cipher. Secret printing would be a more correct description, for the cipher is altogether a matter of typography, two founts being used, one to represent the a's and the other the b's. Thus in any passage in any book by the use of two founts could be enfolded any secret message. Now the first folio is remarkable for its typographical anomalies, which have long been a puzzle. Mrs Gallup claims that her theory explains these anomalies completely as part and parcel of her newly-dis-covered cipher, if we take these devices away the cipher disappears with them. , According to Mrs Gallup Bacon used not only the plays and his own works but the "Faerie Queen," "The Anatomy of Melancholy," the plays of Ben Jonson and Marlowe as ve-' hides for his secret writings. These are "a species of diary to which the author confides thoughts and secrets, the mere hinting of which would have placed his life in danger."

Bacon, Mrs Gallup says, declares in his cipher over and over again that he was the eldest son of the Queen of England by a private marriage with Leicester, and that Essex was his brother. When he reached his sixteenth year he heard the story hinted by. one of the -adies of tho coxirt. The Queen, in a fit of anger, admitted to him that it was true, ,/ the marriage having taken place secretly Jn tfc» Tower before her' accession. For political reasons it was necessarj' to keep this a secret, and the child was confided to Nicholas Bacon, to be brought up as his own, the Queen being determined never to acknowledge him. The moment the Queen found, that the boy has discovered his parentage he was sent to France under the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, and did not come back to England till the death of his foster-father. When in France he conceived an absorbing passion for Marguerite, wife of Henry of Navarre, who returned tor pretended to return it. Expectations were rife nt the time that she and her husband were to be divorced; and fclr Amyas Paulet attempted to arrange with Queen Elizabeth that should the divorce take place, Marguerite and Bacon should be married. The divorce, however, was not obtained, nor would Queen Elizabeth listen to ihe proposal. This early romance made a profound impression on Bacon, and he wrote, long afterwards, "Romeo and Juliet" in commemoration of it.

Mr Mallock gives a passage of "pa--thetic and dignifies beauty" Avhich Mrs Gallup has extracted by this biliteral cypher from Bacon's "NeAV Atlantis" relatiA-e to Bacon's love for .Marguerite, and says it seems to him "almost inconceivable that multiplied coincidences such as these can be the Avork of chance, or that they •can originate otherwise than in the fact • that in these pages at -all events — the preface of the 'Novum Organum,' printed m 1620, and in the dedication of Spenser's Complaints, printed in 1591 — a biliteral cipher exists, in both cases the Avork of Bacon, and if such a cipher really exists here, the probabilities are OA'er'whelming that .Airs Gallup is right, and that Aye shall find it existing in the first folio of Shakespeare also."

Mrs Gallup's idea is highly ingenious, and if an independent investigation of the first folio proves that any sense at all can be extracted out of typographical anomalies by a fair use "of Bacon's cipher Aye shall be ready to belieA-e that there is something more than mere Yankee flap doodle in her theory. At present we are as sceptical as ever.