Note 16 — INTRODUCTORY

I am, I need scarcely say, very far from denying the possible existence of ciphers, cryptograms, and anagrams, whether in “Shakespeare’s” plays and poems or in other literature of that day. It is known that such things were frequently made use of by writers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Bacon himself gives us an example of the biliteral cipher, and it is known that he often employed such cryptic methods of writing. It is none the less true that the search for these things by “Baconian” enthusiasts of the present day has frequently led to very distressing results, for “that way madness lies.”