Cracking the Shakespeare Code: The Seven Steps to Mercy - Part 1 | Free Documentary History

Imagine a country where many people have become convinced that much of what we know about William Shakespeare is wrong. Thanks to the efforts of one dedicated man, a chunk of the population believes in some hugely controversial ideas about Shakespeare and secret codes appearing in his works. Well, that country is Norway. Church organist Petter Amundsen has persuaded a best-selling author to write the book of his theories and his codes have been reported on the evening news in his home country. With thousands of followers across social media who are determined to prove Petter right. I'm not one of them and I love Shakespeare too much to keep quiet. My name is Robert Crompton. Not only do I write about Shakespeare in my PhD thesis but I've also performed his plays on stage as an actor and taught his works to hundreds of students. In all areas of my life, Shakespeare is everywhere. Petter Amundsen has no PhD, no university professorship and yet he's written a book about Shakespeare. He's supposed to have an astonishing ability to see codes and messages which solve every mystery about Shakespearean authorship. Surely Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. No question. We know perfectly well that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. We have the unimpugnable historical evidence. There are books with his name as author. We have all the porters of Shakespeare's plays printed in his lifetime and quite a lot of those name him on the title page. There are monuments that hail his achievements and we have comments from people who knew him as a writer. Shakespeare is the most important figure in world literature. A glover's son from Stratford-upon-Avon. A grammar school boy who came to London and wrote the greatest plays in history. The man who created Hamlet, Othello, Lady Macbeth, Prospero. The man who crafted the most beautiful sonnets in English. The man who could put kings and commoners side by side on stage and whose works can still make an audience weep with sorrow or laughter. William Shakespeare, the Bard. One of England's greatest achievements and exports. Everybody with any sense accepts this, don't they? But something about this man and his theories still intrigued me. If he was right, he would change the face of scholarship forever. Petter is convinced that he has discovered so-called steganographic codes that we know were frequently used during Shakespeare's day. Just as with modern day computers, there has always been a need for protecting sensitive information. Petter's cryptological research has led him to believe that the works of William Shakespeare were actually produced by this man. The philosopher and politician Sir Francis Bacon. The only problem, of course, is that there have been scores of code-breakers before Petter. Happy amateurs who have all been obsessed with finding a hidden truth behind Shakespeare. But their work has never been accepted by professional scholars. Surely looking for codes in Shakespeare is, and will always be, pointless. Maybe I was just looking forward to proving him utterly, humiliatingly, wrong. And I have some stuff over here because I'd like to show you. If I'm right about this, then reality is indeed as fantastic or even more so than imagination. Because the implications are almost terrifying in the end. But we'll take it one step at a time. Sure. Yes. I look forward to being terrified. Yes, I hope you'll stay with me until you are terrified. Or appalled. OK. This is a very nice book. Wow. Petter has a facsimile of the first folio of Shakespeare's plays. Compiled by some of his fellow actors after his death. There are only about 40 original copies remaining. Each one valued at around £15 million. It's a book that brings together the greatest works of drama in any language. Masterpiece after masterpiece. Petter thinks that the first page contains a code. He believes it's hidden in this dedicatory poem by Ben Johnson. A man who was Shakespeare's friend, rival and in Petter's eyes, a secret co-conspirator. What we have here is probably the simplest way possible to convey a secret message. But it's just under your nose, so it has been missed for many, many, many years. OK. Begin with the first line. This figure that thou here seest put. This figure is usually regarded by everyone else as referring to the portrait of Shakespeare on the opposite page. But Petter thinks it's something completely different. Figure. Is that a word that only means one thing? Well, no. It can mean rhetorical figures as well. It can be related to a visual image. But, I mean, if you're suggesting what figure is related to a code, is it? As well, is it in a way of... No. I was thinking about numbers. Oh, OK. Right. So, it's a figure... Yeah, sure, of course. Is there a number present here? Look at the edge. Well, oh, two. Right, of course. This figure, too, that thou here seest put. OK. An acrostic is where the first letter of each line spells out a message. It's been a popular poetic technique for thousands of years, but it can also be used as a way of communicating a secret message to the reader. What could we then do? Well, tell us, Petter. This may open doors. Sure. Historically, there were strict conventions for printing poems. Each line of verse should begin with a capital letter. In this case, there seems to be a huge typographical error. The lowercase w should be an uppercase letter. So, probably, this was done on purpose. In code history, deliberate errors in a text are often a hint, a clue for readers in the know to keep searching. Any ideas what can we do with T-W-O in the book? Well, you can turn to page two, presumably. That is what I did. Let's see what happens. We have T-W-O here, and also a repetition of lowercase w. It should have been a capital one. But where does that take us? Are we looking for a cross-sticks that say three or five now in the margins? And then we could go to... Yeah. But you see, the margins, yes. Because what I discovered was this. F. Bacon. I see. Right, so you... OK. Sir Francis Bacon has often been put forward as the true author of Shakespeare's works. He was a brilliant man, fascinated by codes and ciphers, well-travelled and multilingual, who combined a stellar legal and political career with writing works of science and philosophy, and he was the greatest English essayist of his age. But most scholars reject any suggestion that the plays in the first folio are really by Bacon. This is vital to the scene between Prospero and Miranda. Lend thy hand and pluck my magic garment from me, sir. You have often begun to tell me what I am. But stopped and left me to a bootless inquisition, concluding stay, not yet. This is integral to Miranda finding out who she is. It's about identity. Yeah, well, it is about identity. It is indeed, but it's specifically about identity, which is necessary for the development of the plot of The Tempest, I would say. I mean, that is interesting that you can relate that thematically to your acrostic code. I think that is very interesting. Petter also thinks there could be a code called a gematria hidden here. A gematria code is when letters are replaced by numbers, giving words a numerical value. The value of Bacon is 33. The space between F and Bacon is on line 33. TWO begins on line 100. But the codes go deeper. They can even, in Petter's opinion, reveal the identity of the author. To understand this, we need to go back to the first sentence of that dedicatory poem. Another way to read messages in text is when words borrow letters from the next word without changing the order. This figure can become this figureth, meaning this figures. Then what does it figure? This figures the author. Athar is a perfect anagram for author. Maybe it could be this figureth the authors, because we have an ES, but that is more like genitive, autores, so it's not perfect. Can I just... Presumably, even if there is that existing there, that says this figureth the author, and actually, this does figure the author. So actually, this figure that thou here seest put is just exactly another way of saying, exactly, this figures the author. Ta-da! I mean, there are still things that I will have to come at you with, particularly to do with the writings of Bacon himself and how stylistically divergent they are from the writings of Shakespeare. Bacon wrote wittily aphoristic prose, and he could certainly turn a figurative phrase. My favourite begins his essay Of Revenge. Revenge is a kind of wild justice. The more man's nature runs to, the more law to weed it out. However, Bacon was a prose writer, not a playwright. He was a master of the clever, lucid essay. But could he switch from the rhetoric of the royal court to the low life of London, as Shakespeare does in Henry V? Shakespeare could read Plutarch and Ovid in translation, if necessary. Could Bacon really have translated the grim yet vibrant realities of Elizabethan and Jacobean life onto the stage, as Shakespeare does? Or would he really write page after page of largely iambic verse, so naturally and sweetly that it flows like water? For me, Bacon's refinement and elegance as a prose stylist and as a philosopher does not equate to the skills required in a great dramatist. In a Francis Bacon, I see a legalistic, a clever, a witty, a rhetorical, brilliant mind. I don't see the imagination which could explore the entirety of humanity, which I see in here. And this, Robert, is why I suggest that you keep in mind the word two. OK. Number two. Perhaps... There are two personae. This figureth the authors, the two authors. Bethe believes it is highly likely that this code is a signature of Francis Bacon, one of the two secret authors behind Shakespeare's works. So if there are two secret authors, who's the other one? Let me show you something else that Ben Jonson wrote. This is from his epigrams to Sir Henry Neville. Jonson, the apparent conspirator, also wrote a poem to the courtier diplomat Sir Henry Neville, Francis Bacon's nephew and distant relative of a certain William Shakespeare. And there is a parallel here between this line and this line in punning and also what I'd like you to discover. Because if the figure could mean a number here, right? So, can you see it? Well, presumably, if you're trying to find a link here, then thou art not one. Look at the edge. Oh, well, it's got that... It's the same letters, aren't they, pretty much? Well, oh, two, right, of course, and then... Thou art not one, but probably two. Here we have two poems, perhaps pointing the way to the secret co-authorship of two men, Francis Bacon and Sir Henry Neville. The two men were contemporaries, both walking the corridors of power in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods at the same time. Well, in... It's an anagram. Petter also points out an anagram of Neville's name in the poem, just underneath the letter O of two. Of course, this only works if you remember that in 17th century printing practice the letters W, V and U were all interchangeable. On page two of The Tempest, below another O, the name Neville stares out at you. OK, so, but where do you go from there? I mean, is that not itself a dead end? Well, there's no dead end in this. OK, well, what's the next path that we have to go on, then? Yeah, I begin to look on the internet. Petter searched for the word Bacon in Shakespeare's complete works. He discovered that it appears just twice in two separate plays. And did that not make you feel a little bit downhearted that you would presume that it'd be in every play, that he'd managed a way to crowbar the word Bacon in somewhere, and yet you only found it twice. Didn't it make your spirit sink a little at first? Quite the contrary. Perhaps it was used with ultimate care. The first folio is divided into three parts. Comedies, histories and tragedies. The first time Bacon is mentioned is in a comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Hang hog is Latin for bacon. Right, yeah. Well, again, my initial instinct is to relate that to Shakespeare the Dramatist. What is he, William, that does lend articles? Hick, hike, hock. Yeah, accusativo, hing, hang, hog, and a hog, a bit of pig that is hung to be cured and then eaten is bacon. Hung, hang, hog. And suddenly, you know, we have a double-edged comedic effect. Mrs Mistress quickly comes in and says, Hang hog is Latin for bacon. I'll warrant you. But then we go to the history spot. In part two of the folio, Bacon is mentioned for the second and last time, in the play King Henry IV, part one. I've a gum and a bacon and two raisins of ginger to be delivered as far as Charing Cross. OK, what does this tell us other than the fact that Shakespeare has used bacon twice? Exactly. But any similarities here? This page and this page. Just turn back again. Right. You'll have to help me, I'm afraid. In a word or page numbers. Oh, I see. Right. That is interesting. 53, 53. Each of the three sections of the first folio is numbered separately. Bacon is mentioned in the two different plays, but both times on page 53. It seems deliberate. It looks as if an extra two-page comic interlude has been added to the quarto version of The Merry Wives of Windsor, simply to ensure the bacon reference appears on page 53. And in Henry IV, part one, the typographers also seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure bacon appears on page 53. To make it work, the page numbers actually skip from page 46 to 49. So this is really page 51. Right. But now it's 53. And you think that's deliberate just to make the connection between the two bacon references? Because of the significance of 53. And what about the third 53? Because we have comedies, histories and tragedies. OK, let's have a look now. Which play do we have? The beginning of Romeo and Juliet. And what, Robert, is missing here? Something with households. Ah, yeah, of course. We haven't got the prologue, have we? No. And this is the only prologue beginning with which word? Well, it's two households, right? Yes. It's interesting, isn't it? It is interesting, yeah. It's one that would have been perhaps more significant. Just two, not three. OK. Of course, it also fits Petter's theories that just below the number 53 we see the phrase I know a trick worth two. 53 is the answer. 53? Two times 53, perhaps. Right, OK. In the 17th century, a mysterious but influential brotherhood emerged. For them, two numbers had special symbolic significance, 53 and 106. This fraternity has always been shrouded in myth, but one of the most tenacious is that Francis Bacon was its leader. Thank you, Petter. Well, it was all potentially very exciting, but I couldn't shake the feeling that if you're intent on finding secret messages in any large piece of text, then by hook or by crook you will find them. Nearly 70 people have been put forward as candidates for the authorship of the works of Shakespeare. Petter is obviously convinced that it was Bacon and Sir Henry Neville, but others have been just as passionately certain that it was Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Oxford, or even Queen Elizabeth herself. You know, it was Bacon, then it was Marlowe, then it was the Earl of Oxford. The Earl of Oxford is the most common one now, but there are about 60-odd people. In the last five years, it's been Sir Henry Neville. Nobody had ever heard of him in terms of Shakespeare before. Lady Mary Sidney, someone who's just written a book. Now, I would have thought that any dispassionate person would say, 60 people have been suggested. This in itself shows it's all nonsense. You know, if the field is as open as that, where are we? With such a crowded field, it's hard to take any of them seriously. It is interesting, however, that Francis Bacon was the first alternative author to be suggested in the 19th century, and Sir Henry Neville one of the most recent. Maybe Petter is completing the circle, closing the book, and the authorship question. We call this... Almost there. Yeah, I'm fine. Welcome. Thank you, Petter. Hi, Robert. Hi, Petter. What I'm suggesting, I suppose, is that because you've suddenly got these little floating letters, your brain inevitably works overtime to find some kind of interpretation. But we always seek explication. We seek answers. What you really do is to pull this apart until it has the chance to become something. Well, in that case, let's bring it back together. Let's move on. This is my point. So, back to 53, and two times 53, because it appears that from my occult experience, my dabbling with the occult, I knew the significance of 106, which is 53 twice. A Proto-Messianic fraternity published two significant books around the same time that William Shakespeare died. And who were this fraternity? The Rosicrucians. In 1614 and 1615, two mysterious books were published in Germany. The first book is called Fama Fraternitatis, The Fame of the Brotherhood. The second is called Confessio, Confession. In print, it starts a revolution because people read this document inviting them to join the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross. The Rosicrucian manifestos tell us that their founder, Father R.C., died at the symbolic age of 106. The Brotherhood celebrated the power of freedom of speech and wanted access to knowledge for all levels of society. The Lutheran Reformation was a disaster, a failure. It had split Europe asunder. It had made men of learning hate each other. It had made it impossible for people who had big ideas to come together and talk because the Pope was always sitting in the room saying no. Or the Zwingli was sitting in the room and saying no. Or Calvin was sitting in the room and saying no. Where was knowledge going? The Rosicrucians claimed to be a secret European network of brothers recruited under a sacred oath who called themselves R.C. So the letters R.C., they are important. One of the key figures associated with the Rosicrucians has always been Francis Bacon and many of his books bear the watermark R.C. R.C. Oh yeah. Betha believes he has found numerical codes connected to the Rosicrucians in the first folio. The Brotherhood were obsessed with the numerology or gematria of Kabbalah. In this system, the letters R.C. can be converted to the numbers 17 and 3. R is the 17th letter of the alphabet. C is the third. An encoded way of writing R.C. is in section 3 of the first folio. We find the opening page of Richard III or R.C. On this page, there is also a Masonic expression which only appears once in the first folio. He hearkens after prophecies and dreams and from the crossroad plucks the letter G. The phrase the letter G which could refer to the G in the emblem of Freemasonry. There can also be a reference to Ben Jonson as a eulogistic tribute to Shakespeare in the first folio. Look at this. It is a famous poem to the memory of my beloved, the author. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. The 17th word is fame. The first Rosicrucian manifesto. 1, 2, 3. And three words later we find confess. The second Rosicrucian manifesto. 17 and 3. R.C. I think this is interesting. So the thing is, it all works in terms of the numbering. But what does it mean? Ben Jonson mentions the Rosicrucians several times in his writings. So he was familiar with this term. Whether he was a full member of the Brotherhood or merely offering a coded tribute to them in the poem, we simply don't know. Nobody in this period admits to being a Rosicrucian. This may be because the manifesto's message was regarded as so explosive that it caused uproar throughout Europe. Political and religious authorities joined forces to condemn and hunt down suspected Rosicrucians as dangerous subversives. There are Rosicrucian witches in many of Europe and they must be stopped. But there was one problem with the Rosicrucian witches. They were invisible. How did you know who was a Rosicrucian? René Descartes, the famous philosopher, is in Paris. He's stopped by government agents. They arrest him. They say, you're one of these Rosicrucians. He says, how can I be a Rosicrucian? I'm not invisible. So they were really famous. Just to play devil's advocate, it's also necessary to say that the word fame is not necessarily unusual in a dedicatory poem. Something one should confess. Exactly, something one should confess. So where do we go from there? What are we looking at now? What I did was to turn to my computer to look for occurrences of Rosicross. The phrase Rosicross appears nowhere in the complete works of Shakespeare. You can look for the word separately, but in a devoutly Christian era, you're going to find cross everywhere. And because you find it all over the place, it becomes useless. But rosy, that's something else. Right, and how many then? Twice. Let's have a look where they are. The word rosy appears just twice in the first folio, and both times in the late play of Shakespeare. One rosy can be seen three pages before the end of the folio, and the other one appears 17 pages before that, on a strangely misnumbered page, with the potentially revealing words being corrupted underneath. We are all bastards. Oh, vengeance, vengeance. Me, of my lawful pleasure, she restrained, and prayed me off forbearance. Pudency so rosy, the sweet nuance might well have warmed old Saturn. Pudency so rosy, right. I mean, for me, it fits with this idea of the idealisation of women, which is inevitably destroyed by the deceit of Giacomo. But why do you think that the word rosy is here? Published by, or issued by. Often you'll see in books, published by, printed by, published by, by. Right. In the beginning of this line with rosy, there is a certain set of by, four letters. Ah, yes. Pudency. Published by. Rosy. But it becomes better. Okay. Because they use geometry, some kind of trinity they worship, the Pythagorean three, four, five triangle. It's a symbol of the Rosicrucian. Exactly. Sorry. That is the significance of 53. Okay. Because where the sides five and three meet, the angle is 53 degrees. Without the Masonic training, this wouldn't have meant anything to me. Sure. So are you a Mason yourself? For several years. I'm a passive member right now. But we have Apud potentially. But we don't have a cross, do we? Where is the cross? It's right here. C. R. O. S. And what they produce is nothing less than a perfect three, four, five triangle. Right. And Apud rosy cross is 173. Right. I mean, that's certainly there. I mean, that is... You cannot deny it. No. This could open all sorts of interesting connections. I mean, that's certainly... Yeah, that is... This part of Petter's presentation was genuinely thought-provoking. For the sake of argument, let's accept the presence of these codes in the first folio. Why would the Rosicrucians be interested in the theatre anyway? Was there a Rosicrucian theatre? I think there is definite elements of this. The writer of Shakespeare plays has great pains to educate his audience. Was the author of Shakespeare using the idea of a divine play as a way of saying things to the illiterate who couldn't read these books, who couldn't join the great intellectual game which had been going on since the Renaissance? The truth appears so naked on my side that any purblind eye may find it out. As an art form which could appeal to audiences across the social spectrum, including the illiterate, plays were perhaps the most effective way to disseminate knowledge about history, religion, politics and science. And Shakespeare's plays are full of this knowledge which the Rosicrucians were dedicated to spreading. It's very interesting. Thank you. It's true. So what's next? Is this just as... We have to go to Stratford. Right. Of course there is a next step but it's not here. But I have to do my skiing instructor job first. Yeah, exactly. So before we could catch the plane to England, Petter had to go off to his job as a children's ski instructor while I went off to think. All this talk about codes and secret societies was intriguing. But how to unlock the mysteries of the universe as well as the authorship of Shakespeare with the number 53 was pretty far-fetched. Gate 53. This way. Have a nice flight. Well, there are huge implications in a way if he's right. It will change our assumptions of conspiracy and the very nature of things being hidden from general consumption. It will, I think, make a lot of us feel a bit foolish and a bit sad if he's right. Before we could go to Stratford, Petter wanted to show me some texts that he believed supported his ideas. So we went to the British Library. Here is one of the Baconians' most important pieces of evidence that Bacon wrote Shakespeare. The Promise. What if we could find a notebook with Shakespearean quotes? Right. And this is it. And this is, of course, Francis Bacon's notebook. There are some really famous lines in here. And it's dated 1594. Five or six years before the play that made them famous were written. Right. Show me some of these quotations. I'm fascinated. Good wine needs no bush. Hear me out. You are never in. Shut the door, for I mean to speak treason. It seems like an actor's line. Shut the door, for I mean to speak treason. That fool's bolt is soon shot. Thought is free. You call this evidence? I call it interesting. I am not just sceptical of, but utterly frustrated with this piece of so-called evidence. In the world of Renaissance humanism, with ideas and language swirling around the literary and political worlds, it's surely inevitable that intelligent, sophisticated men of the law, the theatre and the court will be saying, writing, thinking the same sorts of things. This proves nothing. I have never seen anything which casts any doubt, whatever, on Shakespeare's authorship of the plays. Of course writers write the same thing sometimes. I almost think this does you a disservice, actually, and your argument a disservice, because, frankly, if we were expecting this to somehow prove that there was this interesting flow of knowledge between Francis Bacon and Shakespeare, then I would expect every other line to be a quotation from what we know from the plays. But if that was the case, then, yeah, that would be certainly much more interesting. Because that is what Mrs Pott did. Right. And was her first name Crack? Very good one. Mrs Pott published a book in the 19th century which endeavoured to find links between the notebook of Francis Bacon, the Promus, and the works of William Shakespeare. And yes, sometimes they did use the same proverbs or poetic quotations, but Mrs Pott also expects us to be astonished when both Shakespeare and Bacon include such earth-shatteringly identical phrases as more or less, you have, and the single word, well. The journey continues. Between the British Library in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's hometown, by St Albans, Bacon's birthplace. Here is a unique artistic treasure which seems to link the two writers, and which I, for one, have never heard about before. So this is St Albans Cathedral? This is St Albans Cathedral. It is not there, for we are in St Albans. OK. In case you think I'm a crackpot, we will mend it now. LAUGHTER So, please. We're going in here. Oh, wow. Oh, what a fantastic... Oh, God, wow, this is amazing. It's a national treasure, according to Clive Rose. Beautiful. And there's the death of Adonis. Yes. And the boar behind. And look how brilliant the boards are. Look at that fang. Fantastic. God, the horses are just... Oh, it's amazing. And you know what? It is from just before 1600. So this is the only contemporary painting discovered by a Shakespearean theme. But it would have been much more neat if this had been discovered in Stratford-upon-Avon and not here in enemy territory. Shakespeare's great poem Venus and Adonis forms a major part of my doctorate. And here is a depiction of the story showing young Adonis killed by a boar with the goddess of love powerless to help. And it's here in St Albans, the town most closely associated with Sir Francis Bacon. I had no idea it was here. And it certainly makes me think it's beautiful. Even if it's here, even if it's in St Albans, even if I know that Francis Bacon walked along that street and came into this room every single day, and in fact, even if I know that Francis Bacon took up a paintbrush and painted it himself, it still, to my mind, does not prove that Francis Bacon was the writer of Venus and Adonis. It looks like a feminine character up there. Where? Wait, it's not. Sitting on the horse. You see the orange thing? That's a moustache. Above the right. No, but you get it at a completely wrong angle. I've seen it from there, and I've seen it from here, and that's a big moustache. No, but the ridge of the nose? No, it's definitely a man, right? Look, it's definitely a man. I agree. From here, it's a man. It's Francis Bacon and his hat. It's not Francis Bacon and his hat. Yeah, it is. They all look like Francis Bacon. They must be Francis Bacon. We travel next to the far northeast of England, to Annick Castle, the ancient seat of the Dukes of Northumberland. Petter is apparently going to show me a document which is kept here, and which for Baconians is the smoking gun, the holy grail of their argument. Hi, I'm Robert. Hi, I'm Petter. Scholars have trawled through every scrap of paper from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. However, there are relatively few documents, which we know about, which are signed by or make reference to William Shakespeare. But there is one document, which is rarely mentioned by biographers of Shakespeare. One document in which Shakespeare's name is written a dozen times. Let's hear it begin. If you'd like to take a peek. The Northumberland Manuscript is a small document, damaged by fire. It was originally wrapped around a collection of handwritten Bacon documents. On the manuscript there is a table of contents, and the names Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare. The Shakespeare plays Richard II and Richard III are mentioned in a context which might suggest that Francis Bacon was their author. It says by the same author. Francis written twice. One properly and one reversed. So it says Francis William Shakespeare. It seems to be an attempt to try to experiment with a signature. Well, I mean, that's just absolute conjecture, isn't it? Yeah, but have a look. Well, I mean, I can see, I can see. What do you think all these William Shakespeare Shakespeare below? To be honest, Petter, I don't feel in a position to speculate. I don't know, I don't quite know what to say about them. Those who see this manuscript as a smoking gun point out that this is the only document in existence which contains Shakespeare's name, the titles of some of his plays and even some quotations from them. And it also introduces the word Neville, the name Neville here. Here it says Neville. So it has been suspected that this has been owned either by Neville or by Francis Bacon. Well, it's fascinating. You see this? Yeah, I mean, I don't really know what to say. No, but down here there is this section Isle of Dogs fragment by Thomas Nash. Frankly, though, while the Northumberland manuscript seems impressive, we don't know who wrote it. Thomas Nash, a famous Elizabethan satirist, is also there. Does Petter also think he was involved in this too? So Francis Bacon also wrote Thomas Nash? No, I don't want to say that. But why is Thomas Nash on this page, on this Francis Bacon page? It could have been a compilation of manuscripts at some time. Well, there you go. But this is the only contemporary manuscript combining the words Shakespeare and Bacon. This is special. Neville and Bacon had a part in the project Shakespeare. It felt like an ambush. Here was the first piece of evidence which could maybe pierce the armour of my scepticism, and I had been given no time to research it. I was not happy. But could Shakespeare have been involved in the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross? And perhaps even collaborated with Bacon, Neville and others committed to their ideals? Or did the Rosicrucians get involved after Shakespeare's death? Skillfully inserting their code into the first folio for their own purposes. But why would they want to hijack the typesetting and publication of these plays? A process that must have been time-consuming and costly. What was the point? These were questions that remained to be answered. But there did seem a deliberateness to many of the codes Petter had pointed out to me. A crafted quality that appeared to transcend coincidence. But why bother including these codes in this big chunk of text? What was the point? It's a much more important cause that drives these men to do this. The treasure. We're going to find it. An entirely new twist, frankly. Shine forth, thou star of poets. It says, you are a constellation. This is where we are headed. Look.