POEMS Possibly Written by Edward de Vere: “My mynde to me a kingdome is”

   Textual analysis can be as methodical and exhaustive as many analyses of variance in a statistical interpretation of the results of experimental design.  Both are rigorous, both are two-edged swords.  The results from experimental design can change considerably if the experiment is repeated on another random control set compared to the experiment set, five minutes later.  This is especially true when experiments are done on human  subjects, as the control for shared variance is difficult to manage, despite rigorous rules to make as certain as possible those shared variances are alike enough so that the experimental results are not contaminated by them, so as to allow the results of the experiment to be as clearly attributed to those factors manipulated to determine if there is an effect strongly showing a cause and effect relationship.  That is to say, cause and effect in experimental design, and strong correlation in the case of textual analyses.

   Such is the case with textual analysis in determining attribution to a given plaintext in writing.  Different points of view present different results.  Shared likenesses (shared variance) are ‘controlled for’ as much as possible, but certain (or a certain) aspects of the writing are the determining factors that sort out just how important they are to making the correct author attribution.  One approach is scientific (experimental design), the other is ‘science-like’.  The results gathered from observations using pre-assumed robust testing methods can yield differences, but a good experiment in both can arrive at accuracy.  In differential diagnosis, for example, is the observed behavior or a person the result of psychological forces or of neurological insult?  In other words, is a killing spree the result of rage or intense religiousity or psychosis?  Or is it due to the influence of a tumor on the amygdala?

   All the above is somewhat tangential to the presence of codes in the plaintext of Elizabethan writing, but there is a reasonable analogy at work.  As mentioned above, textual analysis looks at a variety of things, using a variety of tests and measurements.  However, I am predominately using a single method:  letter-strings resulting from the application of  transposition skip-of-one equidistant letter sequences, stimulated by a keyword or keywords.  In experimental design terminology, the latter is the method whereby I “do” something to the plaintext.  When the method is so reliable, and produces so much consistency with results, I lean toward my “degree of belief” as the only measure of validity I have–in the absence of more sophisticated mathematical methods and analyses than there are at present.  Although a statistical approach can be done, the results have to be taken more causually in the absence of cause and effect relationships between and amongst variables; such as the clustering around letter-strings reinforcing a letter-string (“de Vere”, for example) with other words and phrases pertaining to the personal and/or private lives of the proposed author; in this case, of Edward de Vere (et. al.) versus William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.

  When a poem is considered by some to be the most well-known piece of writing by an author, and others claim those who say this have the wrong author in mind, it seems clear we should tease this out, and get to the bottom of it.  The test is the same for both camps:  the internal evidence; i.e., word use, the similarity of phrases used by one writer as opposed to another, and so on.

   Such is the case with a poem attributed by some to Edward Dyer (1543 – 1607), and others to Edward de Vere, 17th Earle of Oxenforde.  Equidistant letter sequences (ELSs) are ‘internal evidence’ if such evidence ever existed–in my parallax and controversial point of view.  And so, let us take a look at Dyer’s or de Vere’s poem, “My mynde to me a kingdome is”:

Fig. 1

   “FINIS”:  not signed “Edward Dyer” “E.O.”, “L. OX.” or “Made by the Earle of Oxforde”.  Although I found three “Dyer” letter-strings in the poem plaintext (Arrays 31, 35, 93), not one was in a cluster, or had the individual letters of the name either touch or fuse with any word or phrase pertinent to Sir Edward Dyer.  However, when I used “Vere” as a keyword, I got the following:

Fig. 2

   The raw probability of the letter-string “ELAVEREO” ocurred by chance, by fluke, by coincidence is ONE chance in 1.28 Billion.  Is this “proof”?  No.  But a letter-string 8 letters in length, stating syntactically that “Vere, O., hidden (“vale”).  The University of Chicago concordance indicates that “vale” is used 11 times in 8 works (plays).  The meaning of “vale” as “veil” or “vaile”, meaning hidden, is used clearly as “hidden” or “hide” at least once, and two other times somewhat ambiguously as such.  However, in the array above, that “Vere is concealed/hidden” is a clear meaning within the plaintext, and is a refrain seen dozens and dozens of times in various plaintexts, as I have reported.  Is the letter-string “valid”?  It only appears so if the question demands a mathematical answer, but still must be taken lightly.  However, as an internal clue as to the possible if not probable authorship of “My mynde to me a kingdome is” — as an interpretation — is as certain as the interpretation of a metaphor is in Shakespeare’s writing, despite many differing, yet applicable and reasonable interpretations of the metaphor.

   Is not, then, a letter-string an internal clue supportive evidence (possible, probable) that the letter-string was placed within the plaintext as deliberate ciphertext, and therefore is the result of intelligent design rather than a chance occurrence?  If Edward Dyer wrote the poem, why encode the name of “Vere, O.”?  As well, the given name of “Vere” is not in the letter-string.  Which “Vere”, then?:

Fig. 3 

  Given the same latitude for interpretation a metaphor is allowed (i.e., that a metaphor can have more than a single interpretation, in many cases), then the rarely occurring letter-string of “HENRY” with its cluster satellite support might be, in modern English:

“LOE!  This is the hidden, veiled rime of Henry Vere, son of Edward de Vere, 17th Earle of Oxforde, and am the heir to be (“etre“) of the throne of England.  I placed this here with “cloked crafte“; that is, through a method of placing codes as secret messages.”