Real DaVinci-Type Codes?: Secrets in Plain Sight

[Piggy]

Btw, if anyone knows of books or Web sites w/ images related to the Acoma mission or Japanese crypto-Xian art, please post.

 

[drkitten]

Btw, if anyone knows of books or Web sites w/ images related to the Acoma mission or Japanese crypto-Xian art, please post.

Perhaps you might check out this one, it looks pretty impressive in the catalog (translation: no, I don't have a copy).


THE KAKURE KIRISHITAN OF JAPAN: A Study of their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day. By Stephen Turnbull. Surrey (England):,Japan Library (an imprint of Curzon Press Ltd.) 1998. xii, 296 pp. (B&W photos. ) L40.00, cloth. ISBN 1-873410-70-0.

The magic words to look for if you want to do some digging yourself are "kakure kirishitan," Japanese for "hidden christian" or "secret christian."

Another citation I've seen -- again, I don't own a copy, and don't even know where to look -- is

CRYPTO-CHRISTIAN RELICS IN JAPAN. By Hidesaburo Suzuki, 1961.

 

[damfino]

I read this book called "Astrotheology & Shamanism". It claims that, based on theories developed by the likes of John Marco Allegro, that Christianism was born out of ancient cults who whorshipped a particular mushroom and the sun. As for the topic, they present a lot of "evidence" that "prooves" not only that the leaders of the church know about it (and possibly still consume the mushroom themselves), but that every piece of their imagery, from paintings to their clothings, are coded references to this mushroom and the sun. For example, they claim that "The Last Supper" represents Jesus as the sun and the rest of the disciples, divided in four groups, are the seasons (combined with the notion that the 12 disciples are an alegory to the mazzaroth, or zodiac signs).

How much of that is true? One can only guess. It seems extremely dubious, tho. Their evidence is based on selected painting/drawings/photos and rethoric such as "if it vaguely resembles a mushroom or the sun, then it *must* be another reference that clearly supports our claim". But yeah, I think that would count as another "esoteric knowledge secretly encoded in every-day's stuff" entry.

 

[Rosencrantz]

Piggy,

I recently read a fascinating book called Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, by Clare Asquith. She makes what I think is a very compelling case that Shakespeare was a devout Catholic, and he coded all of his plays with pro-Catholic and anti-Protestant symbolism and metaphor to avoid being censored and perhaps even killed for heresy by the Protestant regime. He had specific code-words that indicated when a particular character, usually female, was intended to represent Catholicism or Protestantism, and he often used other devices like names (Montague was a strong Catholic name, and also variations on Luke supposedly denote Catholics), time feeling out of sync (referring to Protestant practices of changing the calendar and forbidding the celebration of Catholic holy days), and characters who appear direct caricatures or homages to figures of the time (Philip Sidney is Hamlet, Robert Cecil is Richard III and Puck, Queen Elizabeth is Portia and Olivia, etc.). The author goes through Shakespeare's life bit by bit, describing each play and the context of history surrounding it, and having read it the plays all take on a whole new meaning for me--his plays now tell the story of a man who believes in something passionately, but is not free to profess his faith to others. I'm not sure how important this discovery is, but it sure seems to me like it meets your criteria for a message hidden in plain sight and a conspiracy to keep it from the public, even if you have to know more about the time and Shakespeare's background to recognize it. If you accept that Christopher Marlowe was killed because he didn't conceal his beliefs well enough in his plays, it does make Shakespeare's code seem much more dangerous and important, doesn't it?

 

[Piggy]

I recently read a fascinating book called Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, by Clare Asquith.

I haven't read the book, only reviews of it.

The general problem w/ approaches like those of Asquith is that they're reconstructive and based on implication.

I'm not saying that there's no truth in what she says. But one of the underlying problems with all literary interpretation that uses this sort of "close" reasoning is that you can find practically any pattern you want to in a wide enough body of work if you're looking for it.

Still, might be worth reading up on.

 

[Hagrok]

I don't believe you'll find pictures of the inside of the San Estevan del Rey Mission. You'll just have to come to New Mexico and take the tour

 

[Rosencrantz]

I haven't read the book, only reviews of it.

I'm telling you, it's definitely worth reading, if anything so that you can see her evidence for yourself. I found it very convincing, and I don't think I'm particularly biased towards Catholicism or secret conspiray stories.

The general problem w/ approaches like those of Asquith is that they're reconstructive and based on implication.

I'm not saying that there's no truth in what she says. But one of the underlying problems with all literary interpretation that uses this sort of "close" reasoning is that you can find practically any pattern you want to in a wide enough body of work if you're looking for it.

I see what you're saying, but I don't see this sort of thing in Asquith's work. This isn't like the Twelve Days of Christmas or Heavy Words Lightly Thrown, which I also read recently and did not find very convincing.

Let me give you an example. Are you familiar with A Midsummer Night's Dream? I just reread that bit last weekend, so it's pretty fresh in my mind, and it's a great example of the code in action. I'll see what I can recall about the analysis.

It's the first play Shakespeare performed for Elizabeth's court -- the author suggests that the Cecils, Elizabeths chief councillors responsible for dealing with suppressing Catholic propaganda, decided to put the playwright under close scrutiny as part of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. A play was commissioned in honor of William Cecil to celebrate a wedding in his family that had been a long time coming, because of the interference of an older woman who claimed to have been pregnant with the groom's child-- and there's a hint of that scandal referenced in the first few lines of the play that would have amused the Cecils and the Protestants, though this same passage has a double meaning for Catholics too in that it also unflatteringly references the moon, which apparently is consistently a symbol for Elizabeth.

"O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue."

We have Oberon (intended to resemble William Cecil), who represents Protestantism, and Titania, who is Catholicism. They have a child, which is the mixed-up state of England of the time, and both of them want it for themselves. Oberon's servant Puck (Robert Cecil, the court's hunchbacked 'pygmy' or 'spirit') is charged with a cunning plan to reunite them. In doing so, he causes all sorts of other troubles, but eventually puts it all right, and so Oberon wins the conflict with Titania and gains control of the changeling.

We have two sets of lovers. The women are identified as Catholicism (Helena) and Protestantism (Hermia). Demetrius represents the north of England, and Lysander the south. First both men love Hermia, and then both turn to Helena, causing them to fight and making them all very unhappy. Puck finally sorts it all out, and the message (to Robert, who was certainly in attendance when it was first performed) is that his meddling was ultimately to the greater good, and that with all the troubles England is experiencing, Robert's intentions are benevolent.

We have the players. Asquith suggests that Bottom is a spot-on caricature of Will Shakespeare himself at the time, and "Pyramus and Thisby" is intended as a sort of apology for Romeo and Juliet and The Rape of Lucrece, which were much more blatantly anti-Protestant. In Midsummer, The players are nervous about being hung by the court for their play, and in their company Bottom is made to look like an ass, enchanted with love for Titania/Catholicism, and is eventually returned to "normal" by Puck before he can play for the court.

The whole play is a great compliment to the Cecils, which considering that it was commissioned to honor William Cecil specifically is not surprising-- it would have been insulting and improper to do anything else. However, it's also called "a weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream," which may be Shakespeare trying to mollify his Catholic supporters that he has not changed loyalties, even if he must be more subdued in his speeches. Seen in this light, walking the tightrope between appeasing the court and encouraging his fellow Catholics, it seems to me an even greater masterpiece, an amazing display of his cleverness and wit.

Nowhere in this does Asquith hedge about what the symbols mean; she sketches out the history of the time and demonstrates clearly what was going on, the sorts of things that people at court or living in that period would have known. When Peter Quince tells Bottom that can't be the lion, because he would roar too loudly and that would upset the ladies so much that they would hang them all, the court would laugh knowingly-- not because ladies would have had players who roared too loudly hung, but because roaring refers to something else in this context, and they all knew it.

So many of the plays refer to hidden messages. Hamlet applies this same stratagem more blatantly, but it is a common theme in Shakespeare for the characters to mask themselves as others, whether it is pretending that Hero is dead from shame in Much Ado About Nothing, or Rosalind's cross-dressing in As You Like It, or Henry going from camp to camp in a cloak in Henry V. Most of the plays have a character revealing his true nature from behind some sort of mask. Shakespeare was exceedingly clever, and his code isn't even that expertly hidden in many places, since it rarely had to stand up to close scrutiny, just give him plausible deniability.

As I reread the plays after absorbing Asquith's book, I can't imagine why I haven't seen it before. It's often amazed me that Shakespeare was able to write such powerful works and with such passion. Many have speculated that he had a dark-haired mistress who drove him on, and I think he did, but not in the same way. I think the author got it exactly right: in the society he lived in, Catholicism was his solace, and the Protestants provided a constant stream of material for him to write about. He could not keep quiet, but he could not speak openly, and so he was driven to write in code.

Really, you should check it out. I don't think it will disappoint you.

 

[Piggy]

Rosencrantz, actually your last post illustrates exactly what I mean about the dangers of literary criticism based on backformation and innuendo.

Given a broad enough datasource, such as the complete works of Shakespeare, and no restrictions on what may be called a symbol, metaphor, or allegory, it's possible to generate patterns of almost any sort. And once you start to see them, they will proliferate.

Take The Bible Code, for instance, and Michael Drosnin's famous challenge for skeptics to try finding prophecies like these in Moby Dick. Brendan McKay went and did just that.

I think Edwin Yoder's comments, excerpted from his review of the book, are apt here:

But, so far as her book reveals, Asquith has no privileged access to the "coded" allegories she alone discovers in Shakespeare's plays and poems; and, accordingly, relies for the most part upon mere assertion. She makes the boldest claims for encryption regarding early plays that are commonly thought of as Shakespeare's apprentice work--for instance, the crude and bloody Titus Andronicus, which she reads as a masterpiece of veiled commentary. As for the later masterpieces, Hamlet, she asserts, is yet another elaborate shadow play or allegory in which the Prince of Denmark is modeled on Sir Philip Sidney, whom she identifies as a secret Catholic.

Of course, one problem with allegorical interpretation is that more than one may play at the same game. Since Hamlet explicitly mentions Wittenberg (with its Luther associations), and alludes in a macabre passage about Polonius's corpse to the Diet of Worms, where Luther was tried for heresy, why isn't it more plausible to read the play as a Reformationist allegory, to picture Hamlet's detention at Elsinore as thwarting England's natural affinity for Reform theology? And by the way, the play within the play that Hamlet casually calls The Mousetrap is actually The Murder of Gonzago, a fact the author seems to have forgotten. In any event, in less than Spenserian hands, allegory can be an inferior and tedious literary form, certainly unworthy of Shakespeare's genius.

Asquith's reading of the sonnets is equally unpersuasive. Where the poet-narrator of Sonnet 111 famously apologizes for a "public" identity that stains his reputation as the dye stains the dyer's hand, she is sure that he is confessing shame for dissembling his Catholic creed. Everyone else believes that the allusion is to the disreputability of the theatrical profession, which in that age was legally classified with vagabondage, and is the subject of related and neighboring allusions in other sonnets.

There is a second category of exposition, topical "echoes" and evocations. In Macbeth, for instance, it has generally been agreed that after finding a keen patron in James I (who permitted Shakespeare's company to be called the King's Men) Shakespeare tipped his pen to the king's notorious interest in witchcraft and, by the way, supplied him with royal descent from Banquo. In this and other plausible guesses, Asquith pays a fleeting visit to consensus interpretation.

The most serious embarrassment to her keystone theory, however, is not critical but bibliographical. In the First Folio of 1623, its two editors, Shakespeare's professional intimates, included the late play Henry VIII while excluding others as uncanonical on grounds of adulterated authorship. If Shakespeare had been a zealous detractor of the English Reformation, using his plays as instruments of coded propaganda, none would have been likelier to know it than the editors of the Folio, and surely none less likely to make a mockery of their colleague's memory by including a play that treats the Protestant reformers--even Archbishop Cranmer--sympathetically. Asquith is aware of the difficulty, but brushes it aside impatiently, on grounds that Henry VIII was probably written by another hand and, in any case, was simply too popular and profitable to leave out!

 

[Rosencrantz]

Rosencrantz, actually your last post illustrates exactly what I mean about the dangers of literary criticism based on backformation and innuendo.

Given a broad enough datasource, such as the complete works of Shakespeare, and no restrictions on what may be called a symbol, metaphor, or allegory, it's possible to generate patterns of almost any sort. And once you start to see them, they will proliferate.

Hey, you asked if there has ever been any documented subversive, esoteric, secret information encoded in a publicly displayed work. Sure, I doubt anyone can ever prove that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic and so wrote hidden pro-Catholic and anti-Protestant messages, but I thought Asquith made a very good case for it. Her argument isn't broad, but rather incredibly detailed, examining Shakespeare's life and history in 2-3 year chunks, and matching what was going on politically to what he wrote in his plays. The symbols aren't unrestricted, but compellingly specific: four keywords that indicate whether the character is Catholic or Protestant, and several themes that go with this, including time being out of sync, specific names that represent Catholicism, and the idea of a character's true nature being hidden behind a facade or mask, revealed by removing it. I don't think it's worth dismissing it without consideration, and if you're really interested in this subject, I suggest you take a look at the book.

 

[ChristineR]

I am a Shakesphere nut, and have probably seen ten productions of Dream--I even stared in one once, and I've never gotten that sort of message from the text. First of all, there's no direct evidence that it was written for a wedding, although it was privately performed and ends with a triple wedding. Even if we accept that it was written for a wedding, there's no direct evidence that Elizabeth was in the audience, and certainly no evidence directly tying the play to the Cecils.

There's a tradition that the moon passage refers to Elizabeth, and that Oberon was pointing at Elizabeth when he spoke it. If this is true it could hardly be mistaken for anything but a direct criticism of Elizabeth's failure to marry. I don't really see how this was to be read as a anti-Protestant comment per se, but it sure would be a dangerous thing to say to Elizabeth's face. As the moon was often personified as a "virgin goddess" it's not surprising that moon got identified with Elizabeth, and not just in Shakesphere.

Helena is tall, fair, submissive, and moody. Hermia is petite, dark and headstrong. Catholicism and Protestantism? Elizabeth was excessively pale and extremely thin. The fashion at the time (for both sexes) was to wear corsets and pale powder to look more like Elizabeth. If Helena was played by a tall thin boy in a red wig you could hardly mistake the reference. But wouldn't that make her Protestantism?

Lysander is greedy, opportunistic, and cold. Demetrius is impulsive, romantic, and impractical. Southern and northern England? I really don't see it, but maybe they were played as stereotypes, something like the equivalent of a callow New Yorker and a fluffy Californian. What does it mean that southern England marries Catholic and northern England marries Protestant? Why would Cecil be praised for that? Was Shakesphere trying to send a secret message to Catholic viewers?

My point is that it's pretty easy to do this sort of thing, but if you try to push it to its logical conclusion it always falls apart. It's simply not reasonable to claim that certain viewers would be able to pick this sort of stuff out.

There is some reason to believe that Shakesphere was a closet Catholic, but I find the whole point moot. At that time in England everyone felt confused and ambiguous about Catholism, and it's no wonder that this shows up directly and indirectly in some of the plays.

 

[RSLancastr]

Of course, there is the poster of a fellow who performs magic under the stage name "The Amazing Randi."

The poster has a coded message in it, referring to another magician.

Even once told it is there, it is not easy to find.

 

[Piggy]

Hey, you asked if there has ever been any documented subversive, esoteric, secret information encoded in a publicly displayed work.

Yes, "documented" is the key.

Sure, I doubt anyone can ever prove that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic and so wrote hidden pro-Catholic and anti-Protestant messages, but I thought Asquith made a very good case for it.

Why? Because she has created a self-verifying system of invented codes with no external supporting documentation?

I remember once when a circuit preacher came around to my university, claiming that rock and roll music was replete with Satanic codes. Using his system of evidence, I was able to argue that "I Love Lucy" was as well.

Her argument isn't broad, but rather incredibly detailed, examining Shakespeare's life and history in 2-3 year chunks, and matching what was going on politically to what he wrote in his plays.

This isn't detailed, but narrow. It's a matter of picking and choosing from an expansive dataset, then focusing only on the details that fit one's hypothesis and ignoring counter-arguments. (I haven't noticed one counter-argument taken into account in your support for this Catholic code yet.)

By selecting only supportive details from the plays and sonnets and the political landscape of the times, and by engaging in pure speculation, a pattern emerges -- but one could just as easily demonstrate a contrary pattern, as Yoder demonstrates.

Generating this kind of sea of detail is the hallmark of all kinds of conspiracy theories, from ancient alien visitations to the DaVinci code or the intentional detonation of the Trade Center towers by George W. Bush.

The symbols aren't unrestricted, but compellingly specific: four keywords that indicate whether the character is Catholic or Protestant, and several themes that go with this, including time being out of sync, specific names that represent Catholicism, and the idea of a character's true nature being hidden behind a facade or mask, revealed by removing it.

But these are indeed unrestricted, in that the author has invented them. No real-world confirmation or constraint has been invoked. It's a "Paul is dead" symbol system. There are no letters by the author explaining his intentions to intimates. There is no accepted work of Catholic doctrine expounding any corresponding symbol system. This is what Randi would call "data mining".

I don't think it's worth dismissing it without consideration, and if you're really interested in this subject, I suggest you take a look at the book.

Well, who knows, maybe there is a Catholic code in there. But given the author's methods of argument, I doubt I'd be convinced by the book one way or the other. I might take a look at the book, after all.

But so much scholarly attention has been given to Shakespeare, that unless CA has some new hard evidence to pony up, I'm afraid a self-verifying allegorical system allegedly hidden in the corpus just is not going to hold up to academic scrutiny.

I'm sure I could use the same methods to assert that Shakespeare was gay (as has been asserted), a proto-mason, an anarchist, an alien, or just about anything you care to dream up.

 

[Rosencrantz]

I am a Shakesphere nut, and have probably seen ten productions of Dream--I even stared in one once, and I've never gotten that sort of message from the text.

What role did you play? I'm curious.

First of all, there's no direct evidence that it was written for a wedding, although it was privately performed and ends with a triple wedding. Even if we accept that it was written for a wedding, there's no direct evidence that Elizabeth was in the audience, and certainly no evidence directly tying the play to the Cecils.

I have the book in front of me now, and so I can paraphrase for you what Asquith says.

In 1595, Shakespeare was selected to join a new acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's men. His first task was a celebration of the union between the Cecil family and the earldom of Derby, which had passed to William Stanley after the murder of his brother Ferdinando (Lord Strange). There is evidence that Lord Strange had been poisoned, and the Cecils certainly profited from his death. A letter from Sir Richard Yorke to Strange's exiled cousin in 1594 reads: 'I durst pawn my life that the Lord Treasurer caused him to be poisoned, that he being dead he might marry the young Lady Vere unto the brother of the said Earl of Derby." Elizabeth de Vere was the granddaughter of William Cecil, was accepted by the new Earl. However, Ferdinando's widow contested the settlement, claiming that she was pregnant with a Stanley heir. After nine months and a ruinous lawsuit, it became clear that the distraught dowager had made up her pregnancy, and the wedding went forward, celebrated on 26 January 1595 at Greenwich Palace in the presence of the Queen, who it appears commissioned the evening's entertainment in honor of her beloved 'spirit,' the 75-year-old William Cecil. She and William would have been foremost among the spectators, though he was not normally a great play-goer, but he said: 'I am ready in mind to dance with my heart,' when teased by the Queen about dancing at the wedding, and vowed that until that day 'I will be a precise keeper of myself from all cold.' The Stanley relatives of the groom would have been there, and alert to see if Lord Strange's protege had changed his colors when he changed his company. Most daunting, Robert Ceceil was there, aware of the company's seditious past and no doubt awaiting something that reflected more favorably upon him and his family than Titus Andronicus or Richard III.

There's a tradition that the moon passage refers to Elizabeth, and that Oberon was pointing at Elizabeth when he spoke it. If this is true it could hardly be mistaken for anything but a direct criticism of Elizabeth's failure to marry. I don't really see how this was to be read as a anti-Protestant comment per se, but it sure would be a dangerous thing to say to Elizabeth's face. As the moon was often personified as a "virgin goddess" it's not surprising that moon got identified with Elizabeth, and not just in Shakesphere.

Based on the events Asquith described above, perhaps this makes more sense? "She lingers my desires like to a stepdame or a dowager, long withering out a young man's revenue." For the Cecils, this is a comical picture of the false pregnancy and the Stanley fortunes wasted for nine months, and a sensuous hint of longing for the couple's wedding night. Dissidents at the court would recognize the moon as Elizabeth, too. Asquith suggests that both sides would have laughed at these opening lines.

Helena is tall, fair, submissive, and moody. Hermia is petite, dark and headstrong. Catholicism and Protestantism? Elizabeth was excessively pale and extremely thin. The fashion at the time (for both sexes) was to wear corsets and pale powder to look more like Elizabeth. If Helena was played by a tall thin boy in a red wig you could hardly mistake the reference. But wouldn't that make her Protestantism?

Helena is described as high, fair, 'dotes devoutly,' martyrlike, a 'tall personage,' and a 'painted maypole.' She loves the 'spotted' Demetrius. The character may resemble or dress like the Queen, but that's hardly a very Protestant image; Protestants dress in black, soberly and simply. It's the Catholics who are represented by pomp and ceremony. Hermia is a 'heretic,' low, dark, a tawny Tartar, and pursued by the reformed Lysander.

Lysander is greedy, opportunistic, and cold. Demetrius is impulsive, romantic, and impractical. Southern and northern England? I really don't see it, but maybe they were played as stereotypes, something like the equivalent of a callow New Yorker and a fluffy Californian. What does it mean that southern England marries Catholic and northern England marries Protestant? Why would Cecil be praised for that? Was Shakesphere trying to send a secret message to Catholic viewers?

It looks like I misremembered her saying they represent different parts of England. Asquith only says that they represent Protestants and Catholics. Interestingly, in the play, they both pursue Protestantism at first, then because of Puck's meddling they both fixate on Catholicism, and then finally pair off correctly.

My point is that it's pretty easy to do this sort of thing, but if you try to push it to its logical conclusion it always falls apart. It's simply not reasonable to claim that certain viewers would be able to pick this sort of stuff out.

What's the logical conclusion you see here? This seems no more absurd to me than suggesting that the bumbling, cowardly character of President Logan on '24' is a veiled criticism of President Bush, while President Palmer is supposed to favorably represent Clinton. It's not overt, I don't think there's a '24 Code,' but it's what is going on in the world while these shows are being written, and I think it resonates with audiences now as Shakespeare's plays would have then.

There is some reason to believe that Shakesphere was a closet Catholic, but I find the whole point moot. At that time in England everyone felt confused and ambiguous about Catholism, and it's no wonder that this shows up directly and indirectly in some of the plays.

Okay. Do you agree, though, that the plays are not about Catholicism and Protestantism on the surface, and that the political environment of the time was not conducive to writing about these views openly, so that if he wanted to make statments like these, he would have had to hide them in this way? I concede that this may be impossible to prove, but that doesn't mean it's bogus, either. I enjoy looking at the plays from this new angle, and appreciating the deeper meaning this idea gives to them.

 

[Rosencrantz]

Yes, "documented" is the key.

Documented by whom? There aren't any letters from Shakespeare saying "Oh, by the way, all my plays are in code." Asquith makes a claim that they are, which she supports with a running account of Shakespeare's history contrasted with the plays. I think it's a good case.

Why? Because she has created a self-verifying system of invented codes with no external supporting documentation? I remember once when a circuit preacher came around to my university, claiming that rock and roll music was replete with Satanic codes. Using his system of evidence, I was able to argue that "I Love Lucy" was as well.

I don't think that's quite the same thing as what she's doing. Sure, it's possible Shakespeare wasn't devoutly Catholic, that he wrote fair women to resemble court fashion and dark women to resemble his supposed mistress. Still, I think it's worth analyzing the plays in light of her arguments to see if they stand.

This isn't detailed, but narrow. It's a matter of picking and choosing from an expansive dataset, then focusing only on the details that fit one's hypothesis and ignoring counter-arguments. (I haven't noticed one counter-argument taken into account in your support for this Catholic code yet.)

I'm just saying that you should read the book, because it might set you down the road to what you're looking for. Just because it seems unlikely that Shakespeare's publishers would have allowed Henry VIII to go to print if they knew about the code doesn't mean that the whole theory's busted.

Well, who knows, maybe there is a Catholic code in there. But given the author's methods of argument, I doubt I'd be convinced by the book one way or the other. I might take a look at the book, after all.

How do you know the author's methods of argument? I thought they were quite carefully crafted and supported with historical research. You seem to have this idea that it's a big woo treatise hung on a wild theory. I don't think that's the case. Why not give it a look? Others in this thread have suggested similar works of art and you've said you'll check them out. I don't understand why you seem to already be convinced this theory is bogus.

I'm sure I could use the same methods to assert that Shakespeare was gay (as has been asserted), a proto-mason, an anarchist, an alien, or just about anything you care to dream up.

I'd be interested to read an analysis of the plays based on such an assertion. If it were as well-written and researched as Shadowplay seemed to me, I might find your case as compelling.

 

[Timothy]

To get back to Piggy's original question, but linking into the Shakespeare theme, here's a repost of mine about esoteric, secret information, encoded with a cipher, published in the works of Shakespeare.

Elizabethan court intrigue, teams of cryptographers deciphering, secret writings of Francis Bacon ... a truly fascinating story. Too bad it was all nothing but an old woman's delusion and a pompous financier's quest for fame.

-------------------------

Steering the direction of the conversation back to the notions of scepticism and self-deception, if anyone is interested, it is extraordinarily educational to read up on the later life of Elizabeth Wells Gallup, an english major and former librarian who devoted the last decades to her life 'deciphering' the messages that she convinced herself were encoded into the canon of Shakespeare's (and other Elizabethan writers') works.

She was a devotee of the idea that Francis Bacon was the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare and that he used his biliteral cipher (a rather clever technique, by the way) to encode all sorts of inside courtly information into the works.

With the financial backing of "Colonel" George Fabian, she was set up on his estate in the self-importantly named "Riverbank Laboratories" with a troop of novice cryptographers, working diligantly to find messages that simply weren't there.

One of the young cryptographers in her employ was William Friedman, who would go on to eventually break the Japanese "Purple" code and becomed revered as a giant in the cryptographic community. He almost immediately saw that she was in the throes of self-deception, but he needed the money and had fallen in love with one of the female cryptographers, whom he eventually married, so stayed on for some years while bemoaning the nonsense he was "decoding".

Reading through the accounts of the Gallup and the lengths she would go to in reading a message into nonsense is truly astounding.

His book "The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined" is highly recommended as both informative and compelling reading.

- Timothy

 

[ChristineR]

What role did you play? I'm curious.

Puck, weirdly enough. I was shocked when they offered me the role. I figured they'd give me Helena but I was dreaming of Titania. It was a community theater and I was one of the few actors who was up to reading Shakesphere. So Puck was a woman. I was under so much makeup and fluffy costume though, you really couldn't tell.

I have the book in front of me now, and so I can paraphrase for you what Asquith says.

In 1595, Shakespeare was selected to join a new acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's men. His first task was a celebration of the union between the Cecil family and the earldom of Derby, which had passed to William Stanley after the murder of his brother Ferdinando (Lord Strange). There is evidence that Lord Strange had been poisoned, and the Cecils certainly profited from his death. A letter from Sir Richard Yorke to Strange's exiled cousin in 1594 reads: 'I durst pawn my life that the Lord Treasurer caused him to be poisoned, that he being dead he might marry the young Lady Vere unto the brother of the said Earl of Derby." Elizabeth de Vere was the granddaughter of William Cecil, was accepted by the new Earl. However, Ferdinando's widow contested the settlement, claiming that she was pregnant with a Stanley heir. After nine months and a ruinous lawsuit, it became clear that the distraught dowager had made up her pregnancy, and the wedding went forward, celebrated on 26 January 1595 at Greenwich Palace in the presence of the Queen, who it appears commissioned the evening's entertainment in honor of her beloved 'spirit,' the 75-year-old William Cecil. She and William would have been foremost among the spectators, though he was not normally a great play-goer, but he said: 'I am ready in mind to dance with my heart,' when teased by the Queen about dancing at the wedding, and vowed that until that day 'I will be a precise keeper of myself from all cold.' The Stanley relatives of the groom would have been there, and alert to see if Lord Strange's protege had changed his colors when he changed his company. Most daunting, Robert Ceceil was there, aware of the company's seditious past and no doubt awaiting something that reflected more favorably upon him and his family than Titus Andronicus or Richard III.

This is all pure speculation. All that's really known is that the play was well known by 1598. The theme certainly suggests a summer wedding. Some of the details in staging suggest an indoor (i.e., private) performance. Certain comments in the text suggest that the play postdates 1594 (without proving anything). Most scholars think the Derby wedding was too early, mainly because Romeo and Juliet was probably after that date. My source is the Arden annotated edition.

Based on the events Asquith described above, perhaps this makes more sense? "She lingers my desires like to a stepdame or a dowager, long withering out a young man's revenue." For the Cecils, this is a comical picture of the false pregnancy and the Stanley fortunes wasted for nine months, and a sensuous hint of longing for the couple's wedding night. Dissidents at the court would recognize the moon as Elizabeth, too. Asquith suggests that both sides would have laughed at these opening lines.

All this is possible, but you can certainly make similar speculations about the various other possible weddings.

Helena is described as high, fair, 'dotes devoutly,' martyrlike, a 'tall personage,' and a 'painted maypole.' She loves the 'spotted' Demetrius. The character may resemble or dress like the Queen, but that's hardly a very Protestant image; Protestants dress in black, soberly and simply. It's the Catholics who are represented by pomp and ceremony. Hermia is a 'heretic,' low, dark, a tawny Tartar, and pursued by the reformed Lysander.

Hmm...I've seen a production where Helena was all prim and proper and Hermia was sexy. They played the "painted maypole" line as an especially cutting (and silly) insult: Hermia is wrongly accusing Helena of seductiveness in this scene. (In fact, the young men are driven by fairy magic to love Helena madly.) The insults thrown at Hermia were common one at that time. As I said, there was a mania for all things pale and skinny. Shakesphere certainly was mocking that fad, something that's also very clear in the "dark lady" sonnets where the lover is praised by roundabout insults.

So I suppose you could dress Helena like a "Catholic" and Hermia like a Puritan, and you could certainly give other hints in the staging that would make it obvious. There's just no strong evidence for that in the play itself.

It looks like I misremembered her saying they represent different parts of England. Asquith only says that they represent Protestants and Catholics. Interestingly, in the play, they both pursue Protestantism at first, then because of Puck's meddling they both fixate on Catholicism, and then finally pair off correctly.

The theme of all things being put to rights is a biggy in the play, but I still don't see any clear reason to believe that Demetrius rightly belongs with the Protestant and that Lysander rightly belongs with the Catholic. If we knew Asquith was correct we could read this as some sort of religious commentary, but it works just as well to reverse the assignments and read a different commentary.

What's the logical conclusion you see here? This seems no more absurd to me than suggesting that the bumbling, cowardly character of President Logan on '24' is a veiled criticism of President Bush, while President Palmer is supposed to favorably represent Clinton. It's not overt, I don't think there's a '24 Code,' but it's what is going on in the world while these shows are being written, and I think it resonates with audiences now as Shakespeare's plays would have then.

There's no doubt that there are tons of veiled and not so veiled political and religious commentaries in Shakesphere. The overt political theme in Dream seems to be that things work themselves out according to divine plans. When you contrast Oberon and Titania to Thesus and Hippolyta it's pretty easy to be convinced that Titania and Hippolyta are meant to be aspects of Elizabeth and that Thesus/Oberon is the masculine counterpart to the perfect queen.

Okay. Do you agree, though, that the plays are not about Catholicism and Protestantism on the surface, and that the political environment of the time was not conducive to writing about these views openly, so that if he wanted to make statments like these, he would have had to hide them in this way? I concede that this may be impossible to prove, but that doesn't mean it's bogus, either. I enjoy looking at the plays from this new angle, and appreciating the deeper meaning this idea gives to them.

I don't think there's doubt that Shakesphere put these sorts of topical references in the play. They are not really secret messages in the Da Vinci code sort of way. 24 is really pretty similar. The writers have political opinions, and they state them through their plots and characters. But no is meant to secretly understand the messages in 24, they're pretty obvious.

I think it's all quite a stretch for Dream. Measure for Measure deals directly with religion, and has some very sharp jabs at Catholics. But that play was apparently intended as a not-so-subtle message to King James (he of the Bible translation). But the closest thing to a secret Catholic/Protestant message I see is in Hamlet. If you're a Protestant, the Ghost is either a demonic vision or a hallucination. If you're a Catholic, it could be a real message from beyond. Once you realize that, you can get all dizzy trying to read the play in two ways. But everyone does that anyhow!

 

[ChristineR]

Oh, I should mention that Shakesphere was gay. Actually the whole concept didn't exist in Elizabethian England, but the sonnets provide ample evidence that he had sex with at least one young man. It's known that cross dressing young actors frequently played their parts "offstage" for extra money and while this sort of thing wasn't exactly considered praiseworthy, sex between young (mostly poor) men and older (mostly rich) was certainly tolerated at least as much as it nowadays.

The sonnets also imply that he had sex with a "Dark Lady" not his wife, and she may very well have been black or mixed race. Black prostitutes commanded a premium at the time, so she could have been a sucessful beautiful black prostitute.

 

[Piggy]

Documented by whom? There aren't any letters from Shakespeare saying "Oh, by the way, all my plays are in code."

Exactly.

Asquith makes a claim that they are, which she supports with a running account of Shakespeare's history contrasted with the plays.

That's not support. That's speculation. That's how episodes of "In Search Of" and books by Hal Lindsey are produced. That's not how valid scholarship is done. That's how "Paul is dead" theories are concocted.

I don't think that's quite the same thing as what she's doing. Sure, it's possible Shakespeare wasn't devoutly Catholic, that he wrote fair women to resemble court fashion and dark women to resemble his supposed mistress. Still, I think it's worth analyzing the plays in light of her arguments to see if they stand.

Even if Shakespeare were devoutly Catholic, that doesn't mean he bent his literary genius toward continually rehashing this theme.

I've had many years of reading arguments based on this type of "theory". Read a text thru this or that lens, and lo and behold you'll see what the lens shows you. It's tiresome and pointless.

A more mundane justification for repeatedly including fair and dark women in the plays, for example, is to simply make it easier for the audience to recognize and distinguish the characters. There's also a contemporary convention to consider (see Spenser, for example). So which is it? Without external sources, it's just speculation.

Give me a winter sabbatical and I'll write you a book linking the work of Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead with films of the classic Kung Fu era of the mid-sixties thru the mid-eighties, demonstrating that psychedelic rock music and Asian action movies are inextricably linked.

That's not to say that there's no covert Catholic symbolism in Shakespeare's plays and poems, or that Asquith's theories are entirely ridiculous or thoroughly false. But given that her methodology can be used to produce any number of spurious assertions, that there is no external supporting documentation for her claims, and that her ideas are unfalsifiable, there is simply no reason to believe them.

I'm just saying that you should read the book, because it might set you down the road to what you're looking for. Just because it seems unlikely that Shakespeare's publishers would have allowed Henry VIII to go to print if they knew about the code doesn't mean that the whole theory's busted.

What would bust the theory? Anything? Doubtful. It's a self-verifying, hermetic symbol system invented by one critic with no supporting documentation.

How do you know the author's methods of argument?

By reading reviews of her book by literary scholars whose work I know, and by having read trade descriptions of the book, and from previous experience with this kind of work.

I thought they were quite carefully crafted and supported with historical research. You seem to have this idea that it's a big woo treatise hung on a wild theory. I don't think that's the case. Why not give it a look? Others in this thread have suggested similar works of art and you've said you'll check them out. I don't understand why you seem to already be convinced this theory is bogus.

I'm not convinced it's bogus. But if it is true, a book like this isn't going to convince me. I am very familiar with the technique of inventing symbol systems of one's own and linking them with the news of the day and an author's biography to suit the purpose.

The scholarship on Shakespeare is vast. Anyone with a revolutionary claim will need to pony up with more than a self-verifying set of alleged symbols.

There is truth at the core of what she's saying, regarding the times and Shakespeare. But when you start projecting all this into the work and claiming that Shakespeare intended this, that, and the other to stand as symbols, then you're no longer engaging in scholarship... you're playing a parlor game.

I might read the book, if I can borrow a copy. But I'll probably end up tossing it across the room after chapter 3.

She may be right. She may be wrong. She may be some of both. But unless there's something external to her assertions of symbology -- which so far I haven't seen any reference to from you or anyone else in describing her work -- to support her claims that the "symbols" actually are linked to the referents she pairs them with, then I have no basis for drawing any conclusions.

That's why I don't want to waste my time with her book. Even if she's correct, a book of this sort isn't likely to convince me.

 

[kevin]

I don't think it meets the criteria for real information being encrypted, but it's still cool. The CIA has a statue with a code in it. I believe the code is in 4 parts with 3 having been broken so far. And an error in one of the parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos
http://kryptos.yak.net/5

as for steganography on e-bay, the reflectoporn on there is disturbing enough...
http://www.snopes.com/photos/risque/kettle.asp

Also politicians are frequently accused of using "code" words or phrases that sound innocuous but are really telling their followers how when they get in office the raping and pillaging will begin.

 

[bruto]

I can't think of any convincing examples of this sort of code in real life, but there's a wonderful example in fiction, in Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker, in which it turns out that the ditties sung by seemingly unrelated craftsmen turn out to form parts of an important code. I will not give the plot away, however. It's a wonderful book, so you'll just have to read it if you're curious.