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Much Ado About Nothing SI Nov. Dec 11_SI new design masters 9/27/11 12:43 PM Page 38 Much Ado about Nothing Anti-Stratfordians start with the answer they want and work backward to the evidence—the opposite of good science and scholarship. They reverse the standards of objective inquiry, replacing them with pseudoscience and pseudohistory. ould a mere commoner have been the greatest and most admired play- wright of the English language? In- Cdeed, could a “near-illiterate” have amassed the “encyclopedic” knowledge that fills page after page of plays and poetry attrib- uted to William Shakespeare of Stratford- upon-Avon? Those known as “anti-Strat - fordians” insist the works were penned by another, one more worthy in their estima- tion, as part of an elaborate conspiracy that may even involve secret messages en- crypted in the text. Now, there are serious, scholarly questions relating to Shakespeare’s authorship, as I learned while doing graduate work at the University of Kentucky and teaching an under- graduate course, Survey of English Literature. For a chapter of my dissertation, I investigated the questioned attribution of the play Pericles to see whether it was a collaborative effort (as some scholars suspected, seeing a disparity in style be- tween the first portion, acts I and II, and the remainder) or—as I found, taking an innovative approach—entirely written by Shakespeare (see Nickell 1987, 82–108). How- ever, such literary analysis is quite different from the efforts of the anti-Stratfordians, who are mostly nonacademics and, according to one critic (Keller 2009, 1–9), “pseudo-scholars.” SI Nov. Dec 11_SI new design masters 9/27/11 12:44 PM Page 39 by Joe Nick ell Through-the-Looking-Glass Syndrome Countless more examples could be given. Anthropologist Like many other crank ideas and conspiracy theories, the no- Grover Krantz believed that Bigfoot—indeed as portrayed tion that William Shakespeare did not write the plays and in the famously faked Roger Patterson “Bigsuit” film of poems attributed to him may at first sight seem absurd. But 1967—was the surviving giant ape Giganto pithecus. Harvard step through the looking glass (to use Lewis Carroll’s term) psychiatrist John Mack ignored evidence of his patients’ fan- and adopt the farfetched premise, and things can look very tasy proneness and “waking dreams” to suggest they had been different. By thus starting with the answer and working back- abducted by aliens. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of ward to the evidence—the opposite of the ap proaches of sci- the rationalist detective Sherlock Holmes, was easily duped ence and scholarship—one can seemingly reverse the burden both by séance trickery and schoolgirls’ hoaxed fairy photos of proof and mirror the development of a viable hypothesis. (Nickell 2011, 68–72; Nickell 2007, 251–58; Nickell 1994, I call this process the Through-the-Looking-Glass Syn- 153, 175–76). drome because the individual who suffers from such a bout of As we see, many of the proponents of such ideas are quite contagion has entered a realm in which the very standards of intelligent. How ever, it seems that—just as in jujitsu when objective inquiry are effectively reversed, becoming their super- one’s large size becomes a liability once one has been thrown ficial lookalikes: pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and so on. off balance—a person’s own intelligence can work against People are drawn into this illusory world, it appears to me, him when he is under the spell of the Through-the-Look- by something other than impartial reason. Having investi- ing-Glass Syndrome: the intelligent person may be able to gated questionable claims for more than four decades, I have think up rationalizations and theoretical complexities of marveled at how certain persons have walked, been lured, or breathtaking cleverness, fooling first himself, then others. So stumbled headlong into some strange but profound belief. it is with the Shake speare-wasn’t-written-by-Shakespeare For example, time and again someone has been so attracted minions, as we shall see. to the “haunting” image on the Shroud of Turin that he will Stage Left: The Baconians not accept it as the red-ocher (iron-oxide) pigmented work of a confessed fourteenth-century artist, which has been con- For nearly two centuries after his death, Shakespeare went firmed by microchemical tests and radiocarbon dating. Wish- unquestioned as the author of the plays and poems bearing fully believing that the cloth really wrapped the body of Jesus his name. The first recorded doubter was a Reverend James in the tomb, he sees the forger’s confession as false, the iron- Wilmot who—having undertaken to write a biography of the oxide as a contaminant, and the carbon-dating as an error re- Bard but being unable to turn up a single original manuscript sulting perhaps from a burst of radiant energy that altered in Stratford—expressed his suspicions to a Quaker acquain- the carbon ratio at the moment of Christ’s miraculous resur- tance, who re ported them to his local Philo sophical Society rection (Hoare 1994; cf. Nickell 1998). in Ipswich in 1805. In 1848, Colonel Joseph C. Hart pub- Skeptical Inquirer | November / December 2011 39 SI Nov. Dec 11_SI new design masters 9/27/11 12:44 PM Page 40 So fanatical was Delia Bacon that she once spent a troubled night, armed with lantern and spade, at Shake speare’s grave in Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church planning to literally dig for answers. lished a book on seafaring that also included his notions on in fact consisted of finding whatever words he wished to various other topics. Hart despised Shakespeare, whom he make up part of his ‘decipherment’ and then finding some ac cused of buying or stealing plays that he “first spiced with ob- combination of basic numbers and factor-numbers that scenity, blackguardism and impurities before they were pro- would yield the desired result. Given so many variables it is duced”; he felt the admirable portions, such as Hamlet’s solilo- possible to extract almost any message from a wordage as quies, were attributable to another (Keller 2009, 138–41). large as Shakespeare’s. ...” The first book-length assault on the Bard was launched in Nevertheless, other Baconians followed. Orville Ward 1857 by a woman named Delia Bacon. Her 675-page The Phi- Owen, a physician in Detroit, caught the bug and spent the losophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded cast Shakespeare as “a remainder of his life utilizing his own supposedly improved stupid, ignorant, third-rate player” in a “dirty, doggish group of method of decipherment. One of Owen’s divined Baconian players.” Surely he could not have written the great works bear- messages urged, “Take your knife and cut all our books asun- ing his name, she concluded. Rather, Bacon (the sister of der, And set the leaves on a great firm wheel/ which rolls and Congre gational minister Leonard Bacon) be lieved the works rolls.” Inspired, Owen constructed two massive reels, turned must have been produced by a secret society of literary figures by (appropriately) a crank, which unrolled a thousand-foot with Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) as head and Sir Francis canvas. Mounted in rows on this were the printed pages of Bacon (1561–1626) as guiding light. She believed, wrongly, text from Shakespeare, Bacon, and others. Owen or a mem- that she was descended from the latter. So fanatical was Delia ber of his three-woman staff operated the machine using Bacon that she once spent a troubled night, armed with lantern “key” words to extricate text dictated to a typist. In time and spade, at Shake speare’s grave in Stratford’s Holy Trinity Owen published five of his six volumes of Sir Francis Bacon’s Church planning to literally dig for answers. Believing she had Cipher Story. Still later he received communications from deciphered cryptic messages in Francis Bacon’s letters that Bacon’s ghost (Schoenbaum 1991, 411–13). pointed to certain secrets—perhaps even manuscripts—hidden Owen’s secretary, Elizabeth Wells Gallup, next launched in a hollow be neath the gravestone, she fully intended to ex- her own unique method of deciphering Bacon’s supposedly cavate but then struggled with her supposed evidence and fi- concealed messages. She in fact employed a “biliteral cipher” nally lost her nerve. She died insane at age forty-eight (Keller actually invented by Bacon. (One of the ciphers I studied as 2009, 141–42; Schoen baum 1991, 385–94). a budding cryptanalyst of about twelve, it employs two fonts Delia Bacon had set the stage, as it were, for subsequent of printing type, say, roman and italic, which we can designate “Baconians”—those who became convinced Sir Francis a and b. The text that will carry the secret text is marked off Bacon had indeed written as “Shakespeare.” Enter a Min- in five-letter units, so that the letter A can be represented by nesota crank named Ignatius T. Donnelly, who had previously aaaaa, B by aaaab, and so on [see Gaines 1956, 6–7].) “proved” that both Aztecs and Egyptians descended from a Unfortunately, Gallup’s supposed decipherments were race that inhabited the (imaginary) “lost continent” of At- subjected to detailed analysis, most thoroughly by the famous lantis. Donnelly pored over a copy of Shakespeare’s complete American code experts Colonel William and Elizabeth plays, the 1623 First Folio (see figure 1), and divined certain Fried man, with devastating results. The type of Elizabethan mathematical formulas (involving a set of “basic numbers” times bore imperfections, became battered, was often mixed and “factor numbers”) that let him “decipher” supposed mes- indiscriminately, which—coupled with the effect of rough sages from the text.
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