The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined: An analysis of cryptographic systems used as evidence that some author other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays commonly attributed to him

William and Elizebeth Friedman were both researchers in cryptography at The Riverbank Laboratories. This 1957 book is the result of an insightful report that won the Friedmans the Folger Shakespeare Library literary prize. Within it, the Friedmans address theories, which, through the identification of hidden codes, call the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays into question. As ciphers were abundantly used in the sixteenth century, such coding is far from impossible. Accordingly, this work gives a fair and scientific hearing to those anti-Stratfordians whose theories were often dismissed completely. The Friedmans document the history and foundations of such theories, before thoroughly examining and critiquing a great number of them. Indeed, it has even been suggested that this text itself contains ciphers, making it of even greater interest to scholars of literary codes and cryptography, as well as those wishing to discover more about the various debates surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.