Bacon and Shakespeare
Some people have suggested that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare were in fact written by Francis Bacon, and that the published plays contain enciphered messages to that effect. Both Ignatius L. Donnelly and Elizabeth Wells Gallup attempted to find such messages by looking for the use of Bacon's cipher in early printed editions of the plays.
However, American cryptologists William and Elizebeth Friedman refuted the claims that the works of Shakespeare contain hidden ciphers that disclose Bacon's or any other candidate's secret authorship in their The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined (1957).
Read more about this topic: Bacon's Cipher
Famous quotes containing the words bacon and/or shakespeare:
“If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from others lands, but a continent that joins to them.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)