Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-01-28
RALEIGH, BACON AND SHAKESPEARE

| Rev. Frank NJ. Bristol, Methodist
clergyman of Chicago, anda Shakespeareian
scholar of at least local celebrity, has let
daylight through Ignatius Donnellys in
geniously contrived, but exploded ciper So
luton of the authorship of the plays &c.
ceded to Shakespeare Mr.. Bristol, accord
| ing to Geographic accounts, has taken
Donnelly's Baconian cipher and worked ii
legitimately, according to the Donnelly
formula, and finds that it also and as well
proves Sir Walter Raleigh to have been
the author for whom it is claimed Will
lam Shakespeare was a mask. Says Mr..
Bristol
By breeding and education by the study of
law, thorough knowledge of history. geogra-
ply, science and classic lore by snerience in
Court and adventures in war and i;4vei by lit
erary tastes, poetical genius and kenness of
moral perception, Sir Walter Raleigh was be-
yond question equal TO the task of writing these
wonderful plays. But the time has come when
conjecture must be laid aside for certainty. All
doubts vanish in the light of cipher which
has been found in the plays themselves.
He takes up the folio edition at the play
of Henry v, calling attention to the itali-
cized words in each of the two columns.
The cipher, he claims
involves tho srelation of the italicized words to
the humber OF the page, and the adding or sub
tracing is governed 10y the column i'll which
the last word discovered may be located If
the word is in the first column, | subtract if it
Is in the second column, add. Sometimes
multiply. For instance: Here on this first
page of King Henry w." numbered forty
what is the name that nVprVWlprp catches
eye? II is "Slr Walter" There are twenty
two italicized words on this page. Add twenty
to forty six and you have sixty-eigh., Turn to
page sixty-eieht. Again you find Sir Walter"
all over the page add the italicized words
which are twenty. 10 the number of the page
and you have eghty-eight. Here the dominant
page siXty-eight is -" Walter " the fifth italic
word on page eighty-eightis silence" Sir
Walter" as we know, observed =" silence" all
his life acout his PLAYS.
This is Mr.. Donnelly's method of evolv-
ing the cipher. and which Mr.. Bristol
claims follows Raleigh's life closely outside
of the text. He finds other evidence of
Raleigh's spirit and control over the works
Thus, in the titles, none of the thirty-five
titles in the catalogue of the folio" give
the letters of the alphabet necessary to
yield the names of Shakespeare and Bacon,
but three of these titles furnish letters for
spelling the name of Raleigh. So, too, in
Twelfth Night he finds the first letters
to prove Raleigh's authorship. Raleigh's
name is also disclosed, as he was accus-
toned to write it, in the 4 Two Gentlemen
of Verona and in Winters Tale"
Perhaps the most ingenious of Mr.. Bris-
tolls devices is the arrangement of the
plays by title so as to spell Raleigh's name
in an acrostic. But the humor of this is
found in the fact, as any one may verify
without much labor, that the titles can be
so arranged to produce with the same in
! itial letters number of other names. In
the matter of parallelism, Mr.. Bristol finds
any number OF epigrams, proverbial utter
4 anees, philosophic discussions etc, that
: establish as clearly that Raleigh wrote
those in Shakespeare's text, if he wrote
those in his own, as all the procession O
Baconian theorists, from mad Della Bacor
10 kfle IcSSSoSNQ -uI. LoAlt4SiaNs HlpNc tia
Bacon was the author of the wit and wis
dom of Shakespeare. Mr. Bristol fnall!
concludes that by the same process Don
nelly employs to establish the claim Q
Shakespeare, he can prove in a few hour
that Ingersoll wrote the Pentateuch. AnC
in this conclusion he is quite correct, Hal
a dozen essayists have already pricl1ed tn,
fine faneies of Mr.. Donnelly and proved
the unreliabihty of his theories, but thu
far We. have seen nothing from any of them
from Barrett to Proctor and Morgan, tina
is so witty and that cuts to the quick a
Mr.. Bristols quiet fun at Donnelly's ex
penso.
In all this Shakespearean controversy
and which has now descended from tn
plane of gravity to that of literary amuse
ment, not TO say entertainment, it is vel
to keep in mind, as Professor Appleton
Morgan, the latest writer upon the integ
rity of Shakespeare's authorship, well says
"That no one single class of testimony
reEable-documentary, historical or cir