London Prostitutes at the Trojan War and Other Mysteries of History [part 1 of 3]

Continuing the series on the many shared secrets between the Bacon-Shakespearean theme and the origins of American spy cryptography. Focusing on the existential burlesque tragedy Troilus and Cressida – as the key to these common secrets...

The peculiarly irritating play Troilus and Cressida, particularly useful in the efforts to assert Francis Bacon as the author of Shakespeare's works, has placed itself, so to speak, at the epicenter of historical-cryptographic investigations arranged here [i1][i2][i3][i4].

The notable features of this play's Prologue and one of its curious anachronisms have already been discussed earlier with details. Now, it's beneficial to examine another famous and bizarre anachronism from Troilus and Cressida – this time from the "epilogue" of the play.

Strictly speaking, there is no actual epilogue, but at the very end of the final scene, when the action has essentially concluded and the characters are leaving the stage, the main antihero, the bawd Pandarus, suddenly appears before the audience. He concludes the performance with an extremely perplexing monologue. This monologue is completely unrelated to the war between the Trojans and the Greeks, mockingly ridicules the audience in the theater, is filled with hints at venereal diseases, and moreover, is completely torn from the historical context of Homer's Iliad by mentioning London prostitutes.

How are we to understand such a strange ending to this so-called "tragedy" (in which no one is killed on stage)? – To date, no clear and convincing, or even widely accepted explanations have emerged from scholars and other experts.

To add more mysteries and questions here – as with everything else related to the investigation of the Bacon-Shakespeare issue – according to the tradition that has already formed here, we must also include such a mysterious moment from the recent book by NSA historians From the Ground Up: American Cryptology during World War I. [o1]

The close connections between Shakespearean mysteries and the early history of U.S. military intelligence cryptology were never particularly secretive. Therefore, it's quite natural that Shakespeare's name appears multiple times in this book. To be precise, it's mentioned four times.

However, in all these instances, notably, the mentions of ciphers in Shakespeare's texts are linked, one way or another, to the name of John Matthews Manly, a prominent professor of philology and, during the war years, also a spy-cryptographer who developed a "decryption system that disproved the theory of Bacon as Shakespeare."

In all the years up until the release of the book From the Ground Up in 2023, the main cryptographic authorities in refuting Baconian ciphers in Shakespeare's works were considered to be William and Elizebeth Friedman. The Friedmans were closely acquainted with John Manly, and William Friedman maintained a friendly and professional correspondence with Manly for decades. [o2]

And here is a very strange thing in this connection. In the recent book by NSA historian Betsy Smoot, From the Group Up, there are numerous accounts involving this most famous cryptographic couple, but there is NOT A SINGLE mention of Shakespeare in combination with the names of William and Elizebeth Friedman. And in the most famous and long-considered classic book by the Friedmans, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, there is NOT A SINGLE mention of their colleague and fellow thinker John M. Manly... [o3]

How should we understand this strange and puzzling discrepancy? Which, as far as can be judged, no one among cryptography historians seems to notice...

If one carefully analyzes the available documents on this matter, it becomes apparent that unraveling such mysteries is actually not as difficult as it might seem. However, this is contingent on analyzing and comparing ALL available documents, not just those that fit into an artificially constructed "generally accepted" narrative.

Emphasizing reliance on documents and evidence inconvenient for historians is particularly useful in this case because the answers to mysteries of a relatively recent era also help clarify the secrets of much more distant times.

Since it has been found convenient to rely on the "investigation of numerous betrayals" as a common basis for such comprehensive examination, it makes sense to employ the same approach here. But now, it will be an analysis of the "series of betrayals" by the renowned cryptographer Elizebeth Smith Friedman. It's important to clarify immediately that this discussion will not concern betrayals of the homeland or marital infidelity, but rather betrayals and deceptions of a completely different kind.

These are deceptions related, one might say, to the deliberate and intentional betrayal of scientific truth.

In the final scene of the play Troilus and Cressida the Trojan warriors mourn the death of their hero Hector and swear to avenge him. Just as it seems all words have been spoken and the warriors begin to leave, the unprincipled bawd Pandarus, who is the uncle of the beautiful Cressida and arranged her romantic encounters first with the Trojan prince Troilus and then with the Greek prince Diomedes, appears.

An enraged Troilus, leaving the stage, curses the deceitful Pandarus, who, remaining alone on stage, delivers the following strange monologue as an "epilogue" (here slightly abridged for brevity):

The entire array of ambiguous and even offensive jokes by Pandarus, clearly addressed to the audience of the play (which is unusual for Shakespearean works), either revolves around venereal diseases with their painful symptoms ("eyes, half out", "aching bones", "galled"), or hints at their professional activities such as bawding and prostitution ("brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade", "galled goose of Winchester").

The particularly notable phrase "goose of Winchester" stands out as completely out of context for the play. Historians know that in the times of Shakespearean theatre, this specific term served as a euphemism for prostitute. But why did the playwright put these words into the mouth of a character from the times of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term "Winchester goose" appeared in the Middle Ages, noted in texts starting from the 16th century, and one 18th-century source explained the origin of the term as follows:

“In the times of popery, here were no less than 18 houses on the Bankside, licensed by the Bishops of Winchester… to keep whores, who were, therefore, commonly called Winchester Geese.”

Although prostitution was not legal in the city proper, Southwark wasn’t brought under London jurisdiction until much later and instead fell to the charge of the Bishops of Winchester who owned much of the area’s land. The bishops licensed the prostitutes of the area, who then became playfully known as his geese.

The reason why this brief excursion into the history of London during the times of Shakespeare and Bacon turns out to be important for the purposes of our investigation will be more conveniently explained towards the end. That is, after the documents from the history of the emergence of American cryptology in the early 20th century have been considered.

Reviewing all these pieces of evidence – both recent and ancient – is desirable not only in their entirety, but also with special attention to those authentic facts that official science tries to ignore.

One of the two main characters in this part of the investigation – the crypto-spy part – is the prominent American philologist John Matthews Manly. Or “the great John Manly,” as he was called in the memoirs [o4] of another character in the story, Elizebeth Smith Friedman. Interestingly, according to the testimonies of cryptography historians [o5][o6], in other circumstances, she referred to Manly as a “pompous ass.”

It turns out that to clarify the issue of ciphers in the Bacon-Shakespeare theme, it definitely makes sense to explore under what circumstances these descriptions arose.

For an initial acquaintance with John Manly’s role in our story, it turns out to be convenient, as usual, to use the biographical sidebars from the book From the Ground Up: American Cryptology during World War I [o1], emphasizing the most important parts in bold italic.

With the particularly important, specially highlighted fragment – about a certain "decryption system" developed by Manly to refute the theory of Baconian ciphers in Shakespeare's texts – it is necessary to delve as deeply as possible here.

Because not only from a cryptographic point of view but even from the perspective of elementary logic, the idea of such a "decryption system" only raises confusion. Any decryption system is designed to extract hidden information. Once decryption is achieved, its correctness or falseness can be proven in various ways. However, the fact that a cipher does not exist in the analyzed text cannot be proven by any "system."

The source of this strange idea about John Manly’s "decryption system" is well-known. The University of Chicago's website has a large section dedicated to the creative legacy of their celebrated philologist [o7]. The introductory biographical text for this section was clearly written by people distant from both cryptography and the history of intelligence services, so the decryption achievements of their professor are described as follows:

Circa 1913 Colonel George Fabyan invited Manly to examine Shakespeare's text to decipher codes placed in the text by the alleged author, Bacon. In six weeks Manly developed a system for deciphering the codes which he concluded did not validate Bacon's authorship. On the reputation of this work he was invited by the US government to join the Military Intelligence Division in the encoding and decoding of messages and the deciphering of enemy codes in 1915.

It is quite understandable how such fantasy emerges from people who are only superficially familiar with the subject and have heard about it secondhand. However, why the essence of this nonsense was replicated on the pages of an official NSA publication can only be guessed.

Since the goals of the investigation undertaken here certainly differ from those of the NSA, it's now time to tell the reliably known details about Professor John Manly's visit to Riverbank. From Manly's correspondence with Fabyan and other documents, it's known that their communication began in 1916, when not only William Friedman (since fall 1915) but also Elizebeth Smith (since June 1916) were already working there.

In the memoirs and interviews of Elizebeth Smith Friedman (ESF), recorded much later, mainly in the 1970s, this emotional episode is repeatedly and in detail recalled, leaving a vivid impression in her memory.

Compiler's Note: For cross-verification of the testimonies and observations of ESF, historians have a personal letter from John Manly [o10]. In this letter to Alfred Pollard, assistant keeper of printed books at the British Museum, Manly admitted that he had disbelieved in the cipher before his relationship with Fabyan began, and nothing he had seen of Riverbank’s research had convinced him otherwise.

Summarizing the memoirs of the renowned cryptographic lady about one of the less pleasant encounters in her youth (Elizebeth Smith was about 21 years old at the time, John Manly was 51), it remains only to draw a substantive conclusion.

Many years later, as highly experienced professional cryptographers, the Friedmans fully understood that the "system" developed by John Manly to refute the Baconian theory, from a cryptographic standpoint, meant absolutely nothing. It only demonstrated the trivial fact that a cipher of the Baconian type, modified by Manly's method, is much more difficult to decrypt than the original cipher by Francis Bacon himself.

In other words, this fact in no way can "prove" that there are no Baconian ciphers in the books of the Shakespearean era. This is why this episode with Manly's test is not mentioned at all in the well-known book by the Friedmans, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined [o3].

However, the book by the Friedmans provides a detailed account of other – cryptographically significant – verification tests, which Gallup passed very successfully. And she passed them more than once.

What is most interesting is that the same verification tests for decipherments were also successfully passed by the young Elizebeth Smith (later Friedman), achieving the same results, which proved the accuracy of Gallup's decryption work. Yet, this confirmation isn't mentioned at all in the book by the Friedmans, nor in subsequent personal memoirs and interviews with ESF.

Therefore, it seems particularly useful to detail such episodes here.

Additional Reading

[i1] History Science as an Art of Cutting Out

[i2] NSA Hints for the Mysteries of Shakespearean Studies

[i3] Shakespeare, Cryptography and the "Investigation of Numerous Betrayals"

[i4] Aristotle at the Trojan War and "Traitor Founders" in the NSA Hall of Honor

Main Sources

[o1] Betsy Rohaly Smoot. From the Ground Up: American Cryptology during World War I. National Security Agency, Center for Cryptologic History, 2023.

[o2] Katherine Ellison. John Matthews Manly and the Riverbank Laboratory Network: The Fabyan and Friedman Correspondence. In the book: Collaborative Humanities Research and Pedagogy. The Networks of John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022

[o3] William F. Friedman and Elizebeth S. Friedman, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined: An Analysis Of Cryptographic Systems Used As Evidence That Some Other Author Than William Shakespeare Wrote The Plays Commonly Attributed To Him. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957

[o4] Elizebeth S. Friedman, “Autobiography of Elizebeth Smith Friedman – 1st Draft” (Memoir, Lexington, VA, 1966), George Marshall Foundation Research Library

[o5] John F. Dooley. “The Gambler and the Scholars: Herbert Yardley, William & Elizebeth Friedman, and the Birth of Modern American Cryptology”. Springer, 2023

[o6] Jason Fagone. “The Woman Who Smashed Codes“. New York, NY: William Morrow, 2017

[o7] «Guide to the John Matthews Manly Papers 1885-1940». University of Chicago Library, 2015

[o8] Elizebeth Smith Friedman, “Interview with Mrs. William F. Friedman,” interview by Dr. Forrest C. Pogue, Marshall Research Library, May 16–17, 1973

[o9] Elizebeth S. Friedman and Virginia T. Valaki, “Oral History of Elizebeth Friedman (1976)”. Oral History Collection, Tape 18 (Ft. George G. Meade, MD: National Security Agency, Center for Cryptologic History, November 11, 1976), NSA Archives, Center for Cryptologic History

[o10] John Matthews Manly, letter to A. W. Pollard, January 9, 1917, UCL, Special Collections Research Center, JMM Papers, Box II, Folder 8. Cited in the following book: Hatch, David A. The Dawn of American Cryptology, 1900-1917. Ft. Meade, MD: NSA Center for Cryptologic History, 2019