YES, BUT WHO WAS HE REALLY?

Shakespeare was born and died on the same day of the month, 23 April.

23 + 23 = 46.

The King James version of the Bible appeared in 1611, when Shakespeare was 46 years old.

In Psalm 46 in the Authorised Version, the 46th word from the beginning is ‘shake’ and the 46th word from the end is ‘spear’.

In this not uncommon spelling of the Bard’s name, ‘Shakespear’,  there are 4 vowels and 6 consonants.

46 + 46 = 92. In Elizabethan reversed cipher (Z=1, Y=2……B=23, A=24) the number 92 is the equivalent of ‘Bacon’.

Francis Bacon was overall editor of the Authorised Version, with 47 translators working under his direction.

47 – 1 = 46.

Again in Psalm 46, the number of words between ‘shake’ and ‘spear’ is 111.  This number is the equivalent of ‘F. Bacon’ in reversed cipher.

The total number of words in Psalm 46 is 203, i.e. 46 + 111 + 46.

203 can also be expressed 100 + 103.

In Elizabethan simple cipher (A=1, B=2……Y=23, Z=24) 100 is the equivalent of ‘Francis Bacon’ and 103 is ‘Shakespeare’.

I.e. Francis Bacon was William Shakespeare.

Or was he…?

Modern technology provides us with a sure-fire method of determining once and for all the authorship of literary texts.

Using powerful computers, the average number of letters per word in an author’s work can be exactly calculated.

The average for the works of William Shakespeare was found to be 4.242.

There is only one other writer whose works show exactly the same average, down to three decimal places, as Shakespeare’s.

That writer is NOT Francis Bacon.

It is Jackie Collins.

Is Miss Collins….?

(With grateful acknowledgement to WF & ES Friedman: The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined [CUP, Cambridge 1957] and G Phillips & M Keatman: The Shakespeare Conspiracy  [Century, London 1994])