SHAKESPEARE - Cryptic numbers
This is an exercise in clearing my mind and exploring things that, as a sceptic about almost everything, stretch my credulity not a little. Let me be clear about one thing: it relates to the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays and poems; and the view (that is getting more and more support) that the real author was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
So please stop reading, if you don’t want to go there. I (sort of) understand. Many people want to preserve the myths intact. But I confess to finding all the detective work fascinating.
I should explain that much, if not all, of what I write derives from the amazingly diligent and scholarly researches of the late and hugely lamented Alexander Waugh.
Edward de Vere
I’m wanting to look at the endless clues, in the shape of numbers and anagrams and hidden messages, that appear to link “Shakespeare”, the author, to Edward de Vere, who lived a privileged but troubled life between 1550 and 1604.
I ought to make it clear here that there are many other reasons for thinking that de Vere wrote under the “Shakespeare” pen name, some of which are covered in a piece I wrote many years ago and which is on my website. This is just about the cryptic numbers; and it provides an insight into the mentality of those times, quite apart from any relevance it has to the authorship question.
Can it be so?
The reason that I’m writing this is that the clues are so complex and involved that I need to set them out in plain English to understand them: and then to confront my scepticism, asking myself “Can this really be so?” I find myself faced with the multiplicity of these clues, making even me say “Can they all be coincidences?”
Love of codes
We have to start by trying to understand aspects of the mentality of our Tudor and Jacobean forebears that are very different from our own. The first is the need to write in code. They lived in dangerous times. If you were perceived to be stepping out of line, you weren’t just “cancelled” in the way that people like J K Rowling are in the 21st century: you were likely to have your head chopped off or be burnt alive at the stake. It concentrated the mind wonderfully, as Dr Johnson said in another context. And it made you very good at hiding behind cryptic messages.
Hermetism
A second aspect of life in those times was that they had beliefs, religious and other, that seem to us to be strange. Obviously, they had a much more rigid belief in the truths of Christianity than many of us do today; but also in the ideas that we associate with astrology and alchemy.
Importantly, so far as these cryptic clues are concerned, educated Elizabethans were much taken by the philosophical and religious ideas of “Hermetism”, ideas that we have largely forgotten about, although they do apparently have some influence today in Freemasonry. What were these beliefs? All I am capable of saying is that Hermetists viewed man as part of a spiritual, even divine, world that connected us with God and the universe he created. Getting down to detail, they believed that mathematics lay behind God’s creation. One of the greatest proponents of these beliefs was the mathematician, astrologer, alchemist and philosopher, John Dee, a contemporary of Edward de Vere and an important advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.
I hope that I’ve got this even approximately right - right enough, at least, to make a bit of sense of what we are going to explore.
What are the clues?
I want to describe some of the clues, starting with Edward de Vere.
De Vere needed to have his own Number, rather like we need to have our own recognisable signature. Why ever was this? It was plainly linked to the philosophical beliefs that I’ve mentioned, but exactly how is a bit of a mystery to me. One needed a number that would be recorded in the mathematical universe of which human beings were all part. John Dee talks about having one’s Number “gloriously registered in the books of the Trinity”. That’s the best I can do. And we’ll come back to the Trinity.
17 40
There doesn’t seem much doubt that De Vere adopted the number 17 40. It must have been known widely as his signature number (my term, not his). But why 17 40? The answer is complicated.
The 17 bit is easy. He was the 17th Earl of Oxford.
But the 40 bit is so involved, mathematically, that I hesitate to try and explain it. It relates to the hermetical belief in the importance of the Trinity. The symbol of the Trinity was the triple Tau, as in the Greek letter T. (The three T’s were drawn so as to form a cross.)
Now - if you are sitting comfortably - we go to the mathematics. T is the 19th letter in the Roman alphabet. 19 multiplied by 3 is 57. De Vere needed his signature number to add up to 57, the triple T, the Trinity. So, it followed from this that the second bit of his sgnature had to be 40: 17 plus 40 equals 57. QED!
But it goes beyond this. The triple Tau sign also shows a fourth T upside down. De Vere seemed to have been fascinated by the fourth T. His number sounds when spoken to be 17 4T. If you multiply 19 by 4, you get 76.
Now - again - hold on very tight! You need to understand about linking each letter of the (Roman) alphabet to its number, ie A is 1, B is 2, etc. This makes O to be 14, X to be 21, F to be 6, O to be 14, R to be 17 and D to be 4. This makes OXFORD in numbers. Add them all up: miraculously you get 76!
40 17 - Shakespeare
I’m now going to link it to the name “William Shakespeare”. The W was often written as two Vs. The number of V is 20 (the Romans didn’t have a W), so two Vs is 40. After the W there are 17 letters! So William Shakespeare is 40 17. Wow! Another coincidence? There are lots to follow.
Stopping there, is that one of the reasons that De Vere chose “William Shakespeare” as his pen name? Who knows? It was first used in the publication of Venus and Adonis. The dedication is printed in italics - except for one letter, the capital R at the beginning. R is (of course) the 17thletter in the Roman alphabet. The final signature words to the dedication consist of (you may have guessed) 40 characters. Again - 17 40. Maybe a coincidence - or perhaps not.
The Sonnets
The book published in 1609 under the curious title “Shake-Speares Sonnets” had a bizarre dedication that indicates (cryptically) that the author is dead (and so couldn’t be William of Stratford who was still alive). The collection starts with a distinct set of 17 sonnets persuading the reader to get married and have children, the so-called “procreation sonnets”.
The final two sonnets in the book, 153 and 154. are also distinct and form a pair. And here again we go into the kind of mathematics that I find tricky. The number 153 has two distinct prime numbers: 17 and 3. They add up to 20. The number 154 has three prime numbers: 2 and 7 and 11. They also add up to 20. How interesting! Obviously 20 plus 20 equals 40.
So we have 17 at the beginning; 40 at the end. Just a coincidence?
First Foilio
This was the first complete edition of the plays that we all regard as by Shakespeare, published in 1623, an event much celebrated during its 400th anniversary in 2023. It contains the well-known and highly ambiguous references that are assumed to be references to William of Stratford (“Sweet Swan of Avon” etc). But it also has many cryptic indications that seem to refer to Edward de Vere. To say that they are cryptic is an understatement. Here are some of them.
(1) In the dedication, the first mention of Shakespeare is in capitals and is the 17th word from the end. (2) In the next letter, the first paragraph is 17 words long. (3) The heading to Ben Jonson’s famous eulogy is 17 words long. (4) The actual poem itself starts on the 17th line. (5) There is also a tribute by a certain Hugh Holland that is 17 lines long; and (6) its 17th word is Shakespeare.
Are all these coincidences?
Two early publications
We get the same “coincidences” in two books published in the 1590s.
One is Francis Mere’s Palladis Tamia, famous for its comparison between the great classical authors and contemporary authors. There are 17 contemporary authors listed, fudging it a bit as it includes both Oxford and Shakespeare. You may have guessed where we’re going: Shakespeare appears as the 17th word from the end of the paragraph; Oxford appears as the 17th playwrightfrom the end.
The second is Polimanteia by William Covell. He refers to both Oxford and Shakespeare. The 17thword from the bottom of the page is Oxford. Bizarrely, if you count in the marginal note on the same page, the 17th word is Shakespeare. And he also includes in the text the odd words “courte-deare-verse”, which happen to be an anagram for “our de vere a secret”.
Quite a lot of “coincidences”. There are many more, all explained by Alexander Waugh on his various YouTube presentations. But maybe we’ve had enough for the time being!
Westminster Abbey
Let me finish by looking at the Shakespeare monument in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. It was put there - of course! - in 1740.
The quotation from The Tempest that appears on the statue has 17 letters in the first line. Actually, the real quote (The cloud-capp’d towers) has 19 letters but the clever sculptor removed two to get to the 17. Then the initial letters of the first four lines are all Ts - the 4Ts. 17 4T. Is this the final “coincidence”? Actually, it can hardly be a coincidence, as it only gets there by a bit of (presumably deliberate) jiggery-pokery.
There is much evidence that Edward de Vere (or Shakespeare) is actually buried under the monument in Westminster Abbey. But that’s another story - dealt with in various YouTube presentations by Alexander Waugh.
Coincidences?
We are certainly looking at a lot of “coincidences”. As Orson Welles said: “I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don’t, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away”. And he wouldn’t have known half of them.
Tony Herbert
23 November 2024
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