Elizabethan Ciphers *

Della Porta's system was quite simple. Supposing that we wanted to encipher the letter "e" by using the key letter F, we merely have to look along the alphabet which F controls to discover that the letter p lies directly beneath the "e"; "p" then is the cipher letter. He also suggested the use of the "probable word" in cryptanalysis saying that the "interpreter can make a shrewd guess at the common words that concern the matter at hand...."

    According to W. T. Smedley [7] Porta's 1563 book was reprinted in England by one John Wolfe in 1591. It was falsely dated 1563 as if it were the first edition, and a "double A" ornament was added at the top of the dedication.

    This was the first use of this design. The general form was also printed as a heading in Shakespeare's Venus & Adonis, Lucrece, the Sonnets, most of the quartos, many times in the 1623 Folio edition of Shakespeare s works, and also in some others that Smedley attributes to Francis Bacon. It also appears in Napier's book on logarithms and in another dedicated to Anthony Bacon, Francis brother. The last use of the AA device was in an edition of Bacon's Essays published in 1720.

    Perhaps the most modest kind of cipher is the acrostic. The initial consecutive letters of a poem may be composed to form a word, a name or a sentence. The poets of the Italian Renaissance were fond of acrostics as was the English Sir John Davies (1569-1626). He wrote twenty-six elegant Hymns to Astraea each an acrostic upon "Elizabetha Regina" while Mary Fage in Fames Roule (1637) venerated in such verses 420 luminaries of her age. The British essayist and poet Joseph Addison 1672-1719 reported "I have seen some of them where the verses have not only been edged by a name at each extremity but have had the same name running down like a seam through the middle of the poem."

    A remarkable acrostic was devised in verse and attributed to the 4th Century sibyl of the Ionian city of Erythrae. The initial letters form words [Greek lettering] which translate as "Jesus Christ the Son of God the Savior." The initials of the shorter form of this again make up the word [Greek lettering] (fish) producing an acrostic of an acrostic to which a mystical meaning has been attached.

    William F. Friedman in his Shakespearean Ciphers Examined discusses an acrostic similar to what John Davies had performed [1]:

    We have already remarked that acrostics were popular in Elizabethan literature; it should also be stressed that spelling in those days was erratic. Sir John Salusbury, 1566-1612 who was as devoted to acrostics as he was to a lady called Dorothy Halsall, enfolded her name in poem after poem [citing Bryn Mawr College Monographs, vol. XIV, 1913]. One of them runs [with critical letters shown as underlined]:

Tormented heart in thrall, Yea thrall to love, Respecting will, Heart-breaking gaine doth grow, Ever DOLOBELIA, Time will so proue, Binding distresse, O gem wilt thou allowe, This fortune my will Repose-lesse of ease, Vnlesse thou LEDA, Over-spread my heart, Cutting all my ruth, dayne Disdaine to cease, I yield to fate, and welcome endles Smart.

    This, with occasional irregularities, conceals the name CUTBERT (Dorothy s husband) reading the initial letters upwards from the seventh line, and the two parts of the name DOROTHY HALSALL as the letters on either side of the break in the middle of each line; the initials I.S. (for Iohn Salusbury) appear as the first letter of the first word and the first letter of the last word in the final line. . .In all, Salusbury uses six different versions of his own name in various acrostic signatures; spells the name Francis as Fransis wherever it suits him; regards I and IE as interchangeable with Y; and replaces J's with I's or I's with J's according to whim.

    Thus Friedman does not insist upon accurate name spelling and permits occasional irregularities. The cipher does not read from top to bottom; it is reversed and the plaintext travels from bottom to top. Here, he writes,

is one of a number of instances which could be cited; but what makes it true that they, and the others, are genuine cases of cryptography is that the validity of the deciphered text and the inflexibility of the systems employed are obvious.... In each case, there is no room to doubt that they were put there by the deliberate intent of the author; the length of the hidden text, and the absolutely rigid order in which the letters appear, combine to make it enormously improbable that they just happened to be there by accident.

    Friedman may not have known that Shakespeare's Phoenix and the Turtle was dedicated to this same John Salusbury.

    Francis Bacon (1561-1626) the renowned English philosopher and statesman had a particular knowledge of cryptology. He mentions it cogently in one of his works. In the Advancement of Learning (1623) Bacon had this to say:

     The knowledge of Cyphering, hath drawne on with it a knowledge relative unto it, which is the knowledge of Discyphering, or of Discreting Cyphers, and the Capitulations of secrecy past between the Parties. Certainly it is an Art which requires great paines and a good witt and is (as the other was) consecrate to the Counsels of Princes: yet notwithstanding by diligent prevision it may be made unprofitable, though, as things are, it be of great use. For if good and faithfull Cyphers were invented & practised, many of them would delude and forestall all the Cunning of the Decypherer, which yet are very apt and easie to be read or written: but the rawnesse and unskilfulnesse of Secretaries, and Clarks in the Courts of Princes, is such that many times the greatest matters are Committed to futile and weake Cyphers.

    At another place Bacon continues on the same subject:

For CYPHARS; they are commonly in Letters or Alphabets, but may bee in Wordes. The kindes of CYPHARS, (besides the SIMPLE CYPHARS with Changes, and intermixtures of NVLLES, and NONSIGNIFICANTS) are many, according to the Nature or Rule of the infoulding: WHEELE-CYPHARS, KAY-CYPHARS, DOVBLES, &c. But the vertues of them, whereby they are to be preferred, are three; that they be not laborious to write and reade; that they bee impossible to discypher; and in some cases, that they bee without suspition. The highest Degree whereof, is to write OMNIA PER OMNIA; which is vndoubtedly possible, with a proportion Quintuple at most, of the writing infoulding, to the writing infoulded, and no other restrainte whatsoever. This Arte of Cypheringe, hath for Relatiue, an Art of Discypheringe; by supposition vnprofitable; but, as things are, of great vse. For suppose that Cyphars were well mannaged, there bee Multitudes of them which exclude the Discypherer. But in regarde of the rawnesse and vnskilfulnesse of the handes, through which they passe, the greatest Matters, are many times carryed in the weakest CYPHARS.

    By ciphers without suspition, Bacon meant steganography. This may be accomplished by the use of acrostics, whereby the first capitalized letter of each line in a poem may convey the message; the strategy included his own Biliterarie Cipher. Here the very existence of a cipher writing may never be noticed.

    In passing, Bacon's statement that "cyphars ... may be in words" has been generally understood to refer to codes by which a number or a word may designate another secret word or phrase. However it may also be interpreted to mean that an opentext word may itself encipher a different word or concealed name. For example the word "Bote-swaine" may be decrypted as "fs biacen " using a 21 letter alphabet and the fourth letter forward from each ciphertext letter. Francis Bacon abbreviated his first name as "Fs" in his signature while "biacen" is a phonetic spelling of his surname.

    It may be significant that "Bote-swaine" is the first word of dialogue on the first page of the first play of the first printing of "The Tempest" in the Shakespeare First Folio of 1623. Or as some have suggested this is merely a coincidence. And the spelling is wrong isn't it? (Heavens this is not even a proper acrostic). Hit here for a discussion of Bote-swaine.

    Bacon continues in Book VI of The Advancement of Learning with an example; it is, he writes "an other invention which in truth we devised in our youth when [1576] we were at Paris... It containeth the highest degree of Cypher...."

    Bacon explains, "by this Art ... a man may expresse the intentions of his minde at any distance ... by objects ... capable of a twofold difference onely; as by Bells by Trumpets by Lights and Torches ... and any instruments of like nature." He illustrates this with an example of a message printed in two different fonts of type as Manere te volo donec venero; here the underlined = "a" form and the roman = "b" form. The opentext means "Stay till I come for you." The plaintext is "Fuge " or "flee." The scheme is steganographic while the last three letters are "Nulloes or non-significant."

An Example of a Bi-literarie Alphabet.