The Sonnets Epigraph

Few if any commentators upon reading the first publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets have failed to ponder the convoluted syntax of Thomas Thorpe's dedication, which appears on the opening page. It clearly conceals some hidden meaning. A clue to that hidden meaning was provided by David Kahn, a leading expert on cryptography, who remarked upon the chief defect of a transposition cipher

[T]he method’s chief defect, of course, is that awkwardness in phrasing may betray the very secret that that phrasing should guard: the existence of a hidden message.[David Kahn, The Codebreakers The Story of Secret Writing p.879, 1996].

In other words, any obvious awkwardness in phrasing may well betray the existence of a transposition cipher.

Also included within Thorpe's address is a reference to "Our Ever-Living Poet". It has repeatedly been pointed out in the past that reference to 'an ever-living person' only ever occurs after their death. Yet, in 1609, the year in which the Sonnets were published, the man known as William Shakespeare was very much alive, living in Stratford-upon-Avon; and, since the beginning of that year, involved in a lawsuit to recover money from a debt owed to him by a neighbour. It is therefore at least questionable that Thorpe had this same man in mind when dwelling upon the immortal author of the Sonnets.

Failure to penetrate Thorpe's hidden meaning, accompanied by a total incomprehension as to why such secrecy surrounding William Shakespeare was even necessary, has led academics to instead debate the meaning and identity of the Sonnets' 'only begetter', Mr. W. H. Unfortunately, the problem of interpretation is made all the more difficult through lack of punctuation. This has drawn commentators to read the opening sentence as: "To the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W.H., all happiness... " Two questions immediately follow from this: Who was Mr. W. H., and in what manner was he the only begetter? There is, however, an alternative way of reading these words that obviates the second of these two problems. For what Thorpe may have intended was a few words of dedication, followed by a congratulation; viz: "To the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets. [End of address to Shake-speare. Thorpe now addresses an acquaintance] Mr. W.H.! All happiness and that... " In other words, Thorpe's first thought was to dedicate the Sonnets to their "onlie begetter", William Shake-speare whose hyphenated name already appears on the front cover. He then continues the passage with his second thought which is to congratulate Mr. W. H. - an entirely different person to whom he is beholden in some way - wishing him, "all happinesse and that eternitie promised by our ever-living poet." This would imply that the Sonnets had some unstated connection with this unknown Mr W.H. Objections to this interpretation are easily made, but only by ignoring the fact that T.T was being forced into making tortuous phrases by the demands of his intended cryptogram (refer to Kahn's statement, above].

This alternative reading also has the advantage of offering far greater promise in understanding Thorpe's intention. To beget, is to create, or bring into existence. The Sonnets only begetter was without doubt, Shakespeare: a name that Thorpe has hyphenated on the title-page, thereby adding still further to the enigma of the epigraph. In which case, Mr. W.H. becomes an intermediary between author and publisher. It is not unreasonable therefore to assume that Mr W.H. had acquired the Sonnets, and sold them on to George Eld for Thomas Thorpe to publish. Hence, these initials may have a better opportunity of being understood if the text of Thorpe's cryptic remarks can first be understood.

The first major breakthrough into decoding the meaning behind this text was suggested by Dr. John Rollett. He observed that the epigram had been written in the form of three trapeziums composed of six, two and four lines respectively. Hence, by picking out every sixth, second and fourth word in the dedication, he was able to obtain the following phrase: 'These Sonnets All By E. ver The Forth'. Rollett interpreted 'Ever' as E. Ver, a variant form of E. Vere; although it could equally be an anagram of Vere. It has also been pointed out that The Forth can be understood as a reference to de Vere's hereditary title of Viscount Bulbeck, which appeared in the preface to The Courtier, published in translation by Bartholomew Clerke, in 1572. De Vere was apparently only "the fourth de Vere to use the title of Bolebec or its equivalent variation in spelling or title, viscount or baron. The reason for this is the unusual inheritance of the title of the Earls of Oxford, in that between the 4th Earl, Hugh and the 16th Earl, no other sons of Earls of Oxford were first in line for the inheritance during their father's lifetime." [John Ogilivie: The De Vere Society Newsletter, Vol. 2, No.11.]

Could the correspondence between the letters in Edward de Vere's name, six, two and four, and the number of lines in Thorpe's divided text - also six, two and four - be connected with the announcement: These Sonnets All By E. Ver the Forth ? Dr Rollett decided to test this question by seeking a comparative in some other text. After inspecting "many paragraphs, probably well over 20 thousand," over a time period of several years, he at last conceded that only one example had emerged. It came from an abridged version of Boswell's Life of Johnson, and read, "London was not built before". Upon this basis, tantamount to an empirical test, Rollett concluded that there was deliberate intention in Thorpe's 6-2-4 construction. In actual fact, what Rollett had discovered was an extended example of a Cardano Grille: a method that was especially popular during the 1500s and 1600s, when it was used for conveying diplomatic secrets: Cardinal Richelieu being amongst those who valued its usefulness.

In the case above, Thorpe has constructed his grille upon a sound mathematical basis of repeated 6-2-4 intervals. This makes good sense because it allows the hidden message to be read by anyone applying this same key. In a different -- for example, one-to-one -- situation, a strict mathematical rule is unnecessary, since the receiver will have been provided with his own grille to apply to the manuscript: the holes in the card revealing the words of the hidden message.

Remarkably, Thorpe's words have still more to divulge. Using an Equidistant Letter Sequence of 19: this being the number of letters that form the title; i.e. Shake-speares Sonnets, the following grille reveals an astonishing and meaningful possibiltiy.

By arranging these words in grammatical order, it is possible to form the announcement: TO VERE, W.S., HIS EPIGRAM. W.S. clearly stand for the initials of William Shakespeare. However, the word 'epigram' has been split into three parts, which raises questions of authenticity. Nor is the problem helped by the transposition of the letters 'I' and 'S' in 'HIS', or by the fact that the words, when properly formed are not in their correct order. In this respect, one may recall the warning given by the Friedmans:

Precisely what that 'certain maximum' might be in the present instance remains speculative. But, in defense of Thorpe and the above transposition cipher (if that was indeed his intention), it can be said that Vere is now known -- courtesy of Ben Jonson's Cardano Grille embedded in the inscription on Shakespeare's monument at Stratford -- to have been the true Shakespeare. This increases the likelihood that Vere's name was deliberately enciphered by Thorpe as a signal to posterity that he was the true poet of the Sonnets. Upon that basis, the words of the message attending Vere's name would appear to have been arranged deliberately. Skeptics may disagree. However, to repeat David Kahn's warning: -- "that awkwardness in phrasing [so much in evidence in Thorpe's tortured syntax] may betray the very secret that that phrasing should guard: the existence of a hidden message." (supra) -- adds weight to the suspicion that Thorpe attempted too much, with too little space available. He was a printer by trade, not a specialist cryptographer. Working in 1609, he would not have been sufficiently alert to the future developments in the science of cryptography, nor for the need to take extra precautions against ambiguity. He may well have thought that by encoding the name of Vere twice within the same text, using a different method on each occasion, it would be sufficient to avoid any charge of coincidence. In that one respect he had a good argument.

This leaves the mysterious Mr. W. H. unaccounted for. Observing the third line of the grille above, one could be excused for believing that Thorpe was referring to Mr. W. HALL, since this name can be read by joining together the 'H' and 'ALL'. In fact, Sir Sidney Lee, a well-known scholar writing at the turn of the 19th century discovered a printer by that same name who also sold on manuscripts to larger print shops. What makes Lee's discovery particularly interesting is that Mr. W. Hall was married at Hackney in 1608, therefore deserving of Thorpe's blessing. It was also in 1608 that de Vere's widow, the Countess of Oxford, and her fifteen-year-old son, Henry, moved from their house, King's Place in Hackney. Coincidentally, at the time of this domestic upheaval, three plays by Shakespeare, King Lear, Pericles and Troilus & Cressida joined Shake-spears Sonnets by becoming published for the first time, and Anthony and Cleopatra was entered in the Stationers' Register for publication, although it was not printed until fifteen years later. Not since 1603 had there been a first edition of a Shakespeare play, and after this sudden gush of plays and poetry, only one more first quarto ever appeared again; that was Othello, which went on sale shortly before publication of the first folio in 1623.

By combining these facts into a working hypothesis, one is tempted to assume that while sorting through the contents of King's Place in preparation for the forthcoming removal, the manuscripts of these plays and poems had come to light. What happened afterwards is left to guesswork. In this respect, it is an interesting fact that whenTroilus & Cressida was first published, it carried an epistle to the reader, which ended with the comment: " ... thank fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you. Since by the grand possessors' wills I believe you should have prayed for them rather than be prayed." (Repeated in The Mystery of William Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn, p.152). Who were these "grand possessors" - the 18th Earl of Oxford, and his mother, the Countess, or some other? Whoever they were, and the title "grand" suggests they were members of the nobility, then Mr. W. H.'s involvement in the enterprise comes under justifiable suspicion.

Dr Rollett also drew attention to the curious and very rare spelling of 'onlie'. To the trained cryptologist this should sound alarm bells indicating that some underlying reason lies at the cause. Sure enough, the letter 'E' was discovered to have been used when Rollett found the name Wriothesley embedded, as a transposition cipher. Thorpe appears to have formed this name by employing an Equidistant Letter Sequence of 18. Henry Wriothesley was the 3rd Earl of Southampton, and is believed by a majority of scholars and academics to have been the fair youth of the Sonnets. Thorpe's encryption, if genuine, would confirm this beyond reasonable doubt. However, because the name Wriothesley appears in three separate parts - WR+IOTH+ESLEY - it has fueled suspicion that the name may have appeared coincidentally. To settle the question from a statistical viewpoint, it is possible to calculate the probability of all three parts occurring either separately or jointly. Using the statistics arrived at in a paper by Beker and Piper (Simon Singh, The Code Book The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, p.19: London: Fourth Estate, 1999 ), the following approximations can be made to decide the likelihood of all three parts appearing by chance: WR: 1 chance in 1000; IOTH: 1 chance in 33,000; ESLEY: 1 chance in 1,250,000. Combining these probabilities: a legitimate action because they appear on the same page, and with the same common difference separating each letter, but also allowing for the number of additional, possible trials in order to achieve this success, the probability, p, still rises to one chance in a number exceeding a trillion attempts (i.e., p < 1 / 1000 000 000 000). It therefore seems conclusive that the 3rd Earl of Southampton was the subject of Shakespeare's fair youth sonnets, and that Thorpe deliberately encoded his name into the cipher text of the dedication.

Dr Rollett also observed that Wriothesley's first name, Henry, appeared intact down the centre of a 15-column grille; i.e., as the result of an ELS of 15. Despite the possible intention upon Thorpe's part, to secure this result, it must, nevertheless, remain coincidental. Without any cryptic direction from Thorpe to seek the completion of Wriothesley's name elsewhere, there are no grounds for concluding that its appearance on another grille was the result of a deliberate act on his part.