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Real DaVinci-Type Codes?: Secrets in Plain Sight

Back to Shakespeare

I've read through sections of Asquith's book, and it's as contrived as I feared it would be. It would be tedious to go through point by point and show the cherrypicking and bias ... almost as tedious as her text. I'll limit myself to one counterexample. Since the "Midsummer Night's Dream" example has already been brought up, I'll use that one.

Rosencrantz said:
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."
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And from Asquith, referencing the same passage: "But dissidents initiated into Shakespeare's writing would know that the moon was always the Queen; they would recognize the familiar dissident profile of a barren old woman wearing out the patience of a virile young generation as the exchequer was gradually drained by corruption at home and wars abroad."

Sure. There are lots of places where the moon is referred to as cold, distant, pale. But why, why, why does the very same play include the following? Hippolyta compliments the actor portraying the Moon in the play-within-a-play, Pyramus and Thisby.

Hippolyta -- "Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines with a good grace."

It's a throw away line with absolutely no bearing on the plot. There's no reason it would need to be here. If "Moon" is code for "Queen Elizabeth", why take the trouble to go out of your way in a screed to compliment your enemy in code?

It's a single counterexample that throws the whole Moon = Queen correspondence into a quandary. It makes the code useless. If a hidden corollary exists to broadcast a message, shouldn't there be some internal consistency within a single play?

If you're going to posit a hidden code, especially one that claims to be able to secretly document true history in the midst of repressive rule, it has to be to some degree decodable. It has to be consistent with itself. If I can find a counterexample this easily, how many other of her code words can be as easily debunked. I simply can't trust the rigor of the rest of her arguments (or waste my time finding counterexamples).

I call BS on her thesis.

(And, by the way, there are far more than four keywords she uses to support her thesis. There's a whole glossary of them, further indicating a contrived system.)

- Timothy
 
Hmm...what does Asquith have to say about Shakesphere's explicit praise of King James in Macbeth and his anti-Catholic/anti-moralist message in Measure for Measure?

I don't doubt that Shakesphere had opinions on the whole ugly Catholic/Protestant situation, and he may even have been a secret Catholic. But really I just see a lot of concern, confusion, and ambiguity--things that just about every intelligent Englishman would have felt at the time. You really have to stretch to read him as an all out supporter of Catholic restoration.
 
What about Warchalkers? Do the scribbles that they left count?

The problem, I believe, is partly pscychological. As humans (yes, even sceptics) it's in our natures to look for patterns to help make sense of what's around us. People have played with codes for a long long time. So the problem is that we have an innate urge to reinterpret symbols and add meaning. Quite often that 'rediscovery' is nothing of the sort; just people looking for [dare I suggest this?] a romantic notion, and adding their own 'baggage' to the mix. Look at the so-called druids and other new age cults. They reinterpret old stone circles to fit their modern beliefs thinking that they have discovered some ancent knowledge. Who can say? They might have, but the chances are that they haven't.

If you want to experience this effect for yourself I suggest you go to a place called Achnebreck in Kilmartin Glen in Argyll Scotland.

There you will find ancient "cup and ring" 'art'. No one has a clue what they mean (if anything), but they are so fascinating that you feel compelled to interpret them in some way. I felt compelled to think of them as a map (they do look like a map of sorts), or as a journeyman craftsman's "test" - but who knows? A rule has never been discovered that makes sense of them, there is no indication that we ever will. There is no one to ask and none of the Neolithics wrote anything down. They are ... enigmatic.

There are several [better] preserved examples in Ireland, but having never seen them I cannot really say all that much.

So; as far as the greatly over-hyped Da Vinci code and other codes in plain site theories I mostly put down to romance. I don't discount them. Like others who have said it; whatever knowledge they were supposed to maintain quickly becomes unimportant.

Oh, and I suppose another example might be that code that the Da Vinci code trial judge cheekily inserted into his published judgement.
 
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antihippy said:
What about Warchalkers? Do the scribbles that they left count?
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I wouldn't count it because i don't really consider it code. It's more like shorthand, a way of indicating something to "those in the know" but there are no restrictions taken to limit who are in the know....

Same for hobo marks, but probably fewer people knew what they meant at the time.

Same for ROT-13.
 
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.
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Only to those who know nothing about cryptography or cryptology, such as Asquith.

(1) Codes, by their nature, have ONE "plaintext" (one possible encoded messege). If a coded messege can be decypthered in various different ways, it is worthless. The very fact that "codes" in Shakespeare were suggested with an "message" that is anything under the sun--and that nobody except the proponents can see the "message"--is excellent evidence that the "code" exists only in the mind of those who think it is there.

(2) Literary codes, by their nature, use the plaintext to hide the real message--which means that the plaintext is usually of very low literary quality, since its only purpose is to hide the coded message. Are we really supposed to believe that Falstaff and Hamlet, Othello and Kate, were all invented just as a cover for some trite message like "The real author is Francis Bacon" or "I am a Catholic"? It is hard to believe.

(3) At most, it might be the case that Shakespeare's plays are not codes, but ALLEGORIES: that such-and-such a character represents a certain real-life person, etc. This, of course, is quite possible, and had often been done. But the problem is, since there is absolutely no limit on (a) what character can be linked to (b) what real-life figure and (c) in what way, there is in effect an infinite number of possible allegories with an infinite number of justifications for it. How can we tell which is the correct one?

(4) Plays are just about the worst possible place to hide a secret message. Why on earth would Shakespeare choose his plays, which were to be seen by thousands, to hide anything? In today's terms, that's a little bit like someone deciding to "hide" his bank account number by putting it, in coded form, in a nationally-syndicated sitcom. If he had a secret he wanted to keep, or to tell to only a few people, he would just do that, not put his secrets in the public eye, even in a coded form.

The only reason one could think of for putting a secret message in the plays is that it must have been intended for a wide audience, e.g., it must have been some political or religious criticism of the regime. But if a wide audience could understand the coded message (in this case, Catholics), it could just as easily be understood by the anti-Catholic secret police. In the time when the rack and the stake were in wide use, Shakespeare would have had to be suicidal to do something like that, and he wasn't.
 
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grave1.jpg
 
Sorry, for some reason the image I posted didnt want to show up here...
 
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RSLancastr said:
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.
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Is that the poster I bought at TAM IV? The one where he makes a woman float?
 
I have a very hazy memory of seeing a vase that had a portrait distorted by being stretched on it that could only be seen by placing it on a silver tray and looking at the undistorted reflection. This was supposedly because whoever it was that was in the portrait had fallen out of political favor and so his supporters had to disguise their portraits of him.

Ring a bell with anyone?
 
Luke T. said:
I have a very hazy memory of seeing a vase that had a portrait distorted by being stretched on it that could only be seen by placing it on a silver tray and looking at the undistorted reflection. This was supposedly because whoever it was that was in the portrait had fallen out of political favor and so his supporters had to disguise their portraits of him.

Ring a bell with anyone?
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I don't remember that one, but I did read long ago about a vase made during Napoleon's exile whose shadow created his silhouette, supposedly for the same reason.
 
I think I have one. I was watching the Nova episode from a few nights ago (I love tivo) called Kaboom. Apparently Roger Bacon did a number of experiments with black powder that were so successful he was worried about the formula getting out. So he hid it in a latin anagram.

Sed tamen salis petrae LVRV VO,PO VIR CAN VTRIET suphuris, et sic facies tonitruum et coruscationem: sic facies artificium.

http://66.78.90.30/webdoc1.htg/Black_Powder/Black_powder2.htm
 
Luke T. said:
I have a very hazy memory of seeing a vase that had a portrait distorted by being stretched on it that could only be seen by placing it on a silver tray and looking at the undistorted reflection. This was supposedly because whoever it was that was in the portrait had fallen out of political favor and so his supporters had to disguise their portraits of him.

Ring a bell with anyone?
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This sounds a lot like the disguised portraits of Bonnie Prince Charlie that became reasonably common after the failure of the Jacobite rebellions. While Charles was in exile, his supporters in Scotland were subject to extremely harsh reprisals, and anyone ownining a portrait of him would very likely be arrested for treason. Artists used to use anamorphist techniques to disguise the real subject of their designs, as in your vase example. Another method was to paint a seemingly innoccuous scene on canvas that would reflect a portrait in a cylndrical mirror. I seem to recall that Jacobite artists also used certain flowers in their paintings as symbols of support for their cause.
 
There's the hidden acrostic in the Hypnerotomachia PoliphiliWP.

What else might be hidden in it? It's a very odd book.
 
The following exchange appears in the Talmud:

A heretic once asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananya what the Jewish tradition says about Balaam's age when he was killed (Balaam the prophet/sorcerer was killed as part of Israel's "revenge" mission against Midian). The Rabbi answered, "Well, we have no specific tradition in that regard, but based on two verses in Pslams, I can tell you. One verse (Psalm 90:10) reads, 'Our days [on Earth] are seventy years...' (i.e. that the standard human lifespan is seventy years) and another (Psalm 55:24) reads, 'And you, O God, lower them into the pit [i.e. Hell]: men of blood and deceit, who will not reach half their days...' So, based on those two verses, I'd say Balaam died at the age of 33 or 34."

"You're absolutely right!" said the heretic. "I checked our own texts, and it says there that Balaam was 33."

A weird enough exchange, considering that Balaam was a pretty minor character. What would make anyone think that Jewish tradition cared how old he was?

Unless one is privy to Jewish scholarly tradition, in which case one learns that it wasn't really Balaam they were talking about.

The Talmud is full of passages like that, many of them even more absurd, unless one acquires the keys to the "code."
 
Good morning Piggy.
Not quite sure if this is the type of thing you are talking about. Back in the early 90's, I was working in Newark NJ. At the time the big fad was for people to mount huge speaker cabnets in their cars and blast music. I was told by a p[olice officer friend of mine that drug dealers were actually advertising what they were selling by the different music they were playing. He claimed that they had cracked the code so effectively that they could tell what would be found in the car before they pulled them over. I don't know if this is true or not but this is what I was told.
JPK
 
JPK said:
Good morning Piggy.
Not quite sure if this is the type of thing you are talking about. Back in the early 90's, I was working in Newark NJ. At the time the big fad was for people to mount huge speaker cabnets in their cars and blast music. I was told by a p[olice officer friend of mine that drug dealers were actually advertising what they were selling by the different music they were playing. He claimed that they had cracked the code so effectively that they could tell what would be found in the car before they pulled them over. I don't know if this is true or not but this is what I was told.
JPK
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That reminds me of a rather minor and trivial example of an open code that is used by junkyards when negotiating with other junkyards over the phone for parts, when a customer is present. They use a name code, such as "we're charging an Easy Paul" to indicate numbers. I don't remember all the names, but it's a simple code once you figure out the derivation. An Easy Paul is 30.
 
JPK said:
Not quite sure if this is the type of thing you are talking about. Back in the early 90's, I was working in Newark NJ. At the time the big fad was for people to mount huge speaker cabnets in their cars and blast music. I was told by a police officer friend of mine that drug dealers were actually advertising what they were selling by the different music they were playing. He claimed that they had cracked the code so effectively that they could tell what would be found in the car before they pulled them over. I don't know if this is true or not but this is what I was told.
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I think that would qualify, in the same way the slave-song code would qualify, if it were true. In this case, you'd have a consistent and enduring relationship b/t the public artwork (the song) and the private message (the merchandise for sale), as well as an open public display.

While there's reason to be skeptical here, it's also plausible.

E.g.: Someone I know in a northern county in my state, who deals with a wide variety of people in his line of work, clued me into certain hand movements which, he claimed, indicated that a street-level drug dealer was holding merchandise for sale. It sounded way too obvious to me -- an unnatural motion that undercover enforcement could too easily spot.

But lo and behold, I was driving thru a neighboring state and had to stop for gas in an area where one would hardly be shocked to discover that street-level drug dealing were going on. When I pulled up to the pump, there was a small group of young men loitering nearby. One of them broke away and approached me, looking directly at me. He made that signal. I didn't respond. He then veered off and returned to the group.

Under the circumstances, I didn't see any other explanation than that my friend was right.

I guess when you get right down to it, in the case of drug dealing, the consequences of the code being broken isn't necessarily as dire as, say, an Underground Railroad code being broken. Even if cops know what the signal means, they still have to justify the search (although certainly there are means of covering up illegal searches). You can't run someone in for a hand signal. And I'm sure the dealers have means of estimating the chances that a given recipient is either interested in buying drugs (in my case, I could have easily fit the bill as a suburban user looking for a sack) or an undercover cop.

The same would apply to music. A cop's allegation that song=solicitation would never hold up in court, especially given that an innocent motorist could just as well have that song on a CD or playing on the radio. So the effectiveness of the code relies on buyers and sellers being able to distinguish interested parties from bystanders.

The problem, of course, is... how to verify?
 
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