Sceptics' Corner

Sceptics' Corner

The presentation of Ben Jonson's encrypted statement, avowing the identity of E. De Vere as Shakespeare, and urging that he be tested to prove this has occupied the present web site for a number of years. It has, however, occasionally attracted dissent. This is inevitable. The dominant view of Shakespeare, which sees him as the son of illiterate parents, with illiterate siblings, and having illiterate children of his own, profoundly disagrees with Jonson's encryption, believing it to be false; that is to say, they cannot believe that Jonson's avowal is a genuine encryption. This, however, requires them to prove their case: no easy feat, since it has already been proved that the Cardano grille is genuine. Here, then, are some of the objections made by those who have protested against its genuineness. Some of the objections below were actually made by persons holding very senior positions in academia. I will not name them, but if the cap fits, they will recognize it as their own.

Objection] Ben Jonson cannot have claimed Edward de Vere was Shakespeare, because he praised Shakespeare in the tribute he wrote for inclusion in the First Folio.

Response] Actually, there is nothing in Jonson's tribute that identifies Shakespeare biographically; even Sweet Swan of Avon is ambiguous. Jonson praises Shakespeare the artist, the man of poetry, but gives no biographical details to identify Shakespeare the man. Secondly, the objection fails to tackle the Cardano grille, which is essentially a mathematical structure. This protest is similar to ones made against Galileo's mathematical model of the solar system by quoting from the Bible; such protests are an irrelevance. Thirdly, statements made in secret are more likely to reflect the true opinion of a person than any made openly, which may be voiced only for appearance's sake.

Objection] The grille is merely the result of word play. The person responsible was simply searching for words that went together.

Response] The encryption was decoded in a single evening without even once drawing a grille. This was achieved by a mathematical method designed to reveal whether an Equidistant Letter Sequence exists within a piece of text. In the present case, it was discovered that an ELS of 34 revealed the name of Vere, together with much of the accompanying message. Only then was a grille of 34 columns constructed to see how the words came together.

Objection] The message is the result of 'cherry-picking'. There are other words on the grille, and these have been ignored.

Response] Anyone who believes this is welcome to cherry-pick their way through alternative grilles, and discover a message of similar length: one that is also grammatically meaningful, and which appears in clusters. Several have tried, none have succeeded. In fact, the isolated words on the grille referred to represent "background chatter", and are an inevitable consequence of the Cardano grille. The encrypter, Ben Jonson, clearly expected the cryptanalyst to use his/her intelligence and sort the wheat from the chaff, especially since he had inserted a second, separate encryption to confirm de Vere's identity as Shakespeare.

Objection] The abbreviations, Ys for this, and Yt for that, should be written on the grille in full, and not as stated in the inscription.

Response] There is no logical commitment to do any such thing: rather the opposite. Indeed, if one followed this objection, and it proved to reveal a relevant message, the objector would then protest that the result had been contrived by changing what the inscription actually said.

Objection] The words that compose the sentence are too short. With the use of such short words, it is possible to generate many other sentences.

Response] Once again, this is an empty statement that lacks demonstration. A sentence may contain words of only 1, 2, 3, or 4 letters but the words must still make sense and be in grammatical order. A sentence containing a mere ten words, all different, will still have 10! or 3,628,800 different ways in which they might otherwise have been arranged; the vast majority of these making no grammatical sense whatever. "So Test Him I Vow He Is E De Vere" falls into this category, and is therefore one array amongst more than three and a half million possible alternatives.

The objections above are clearly the result of hasty, poorly thought out, and untested attempts to rebut Jonson's avowal.There is also an undercurrent of belief that proposes it possible to prove the Stratford moument's inscription capable of multiple statements. For those swayed by this seeming possibility, a proof to the contrary has been made available.

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