While the controversial Shakespeare Authorship Contention was in “full swing” towards the beginning of the 21st century another academic supposition emerged amongst Shakespeare scholars, researchers and cryptographers, namely was there any hidden structure, code or cipher contained in the 154 verses of “Shakespeare’s Sonnets”? And, furthermore since they were assumed to be of a ‘biographical nature’ if such a pattern might reveal the true identity of the author in the light of the Shakespeare Authorship Controversy itself and finally ‘put it to bed’. Although my maths education was, and remains somewhat rudimentary I turned my attention to see if any “triumphal form” could be deduced numerically from its lines and verses. Sometime in 2016 the author Alan Green came up with a sensational (and I might add fantastical) theory that made some comparison with the number of stone courses of the Great Pyramid of Giza (Khufu’s Pyramid) and the number of verses contained in Shakespeare’s Sonnets (154). His public announcement in 2016 coincided with the release of his first book in a series “De-Coding Shakespeare” in 2017 which was followed by an internet website that was designed to explain the basis of his supposed discoveries and theories. This relied largely on including the 47 verses of “A Lover’s Complaint” by counting the number of verses, words, page numbers and even punctuation marks that are within those combined verses (154+47 =201). How was he to know that Saul Frampton, emeritus professor of Cambridge University had already published his research results that confirmed that “A Lover’s Complaint” was without doubt the work of another poet, namely Sir John Florio or possibly Richard Barnfield. But you simply have to “join up the dots” in order to decrypt its “secret code”.
Alan Green advances his theory with this caveat:
“At this stage it should be obvious we’re witnessing more than just an exercise in creating right-angled triangles. This is a visual representation of Thales Theorem — in itself a huge clue. Thales was the first person to measure the height of the Great Pyramid and he did it using the geometry of right-angled triangles.”
This is not entirely true and furthermore Thales’ measurements were not entirely accurate when using the shadow principle. In any case any line drawn on a piece of paper can be reduced to the mathematical proportions of Pi and Phi. What is more pertinent is where the remaining determinants are in relation to the centre of the circle being created on the title page of the Sonnets. So what does AI have to say about his theory?
“A Fishing Expedition” (Cherry-Picking Data): The most significant criticism is that its methodology is a form of numerological chicanery or retro-fitting of data. By connecting numerous points on a complex diagram and calculating all possible ratios, one can inevitably find values that appear “significant” simply by chance alone. There are numerous ways to draw lines and form ratios, allowing the author to “fish” for any desired numbers until a suitable match is found.
Lack of Rigor and Precision: Critics of Green’s theory argue that the measurements and precision involved cannot be fully justified given the variables and determinants involved, especially for a 17th-century document. The level of accuracy claimed for the constants (e.g., speed of light in meters per second) is considered far beyond what could have been reasonably intended or measured at the time.
Use of Modern Units of Measurement:
A major logical flaw highlighted by sceptics is the use and reference to modern metric units, these being essentially anachronistic to the actual proposition itself. The meter as a standard unit did not exist until the late 18th century, making it highly unlikely that coordinates or physical constants were encoded to match its modern value.
Contextual and Historical Criticisms
The inherent anachronism of the scientific knowledge in the age of “Shakespeare” is one of the major criticisms highlighted by several academics. The theory requires that Shakespeare or his contemporaries possessed knowledge of advanced calculus and other physical constants (like the precise speed of light) that were only officially discovered centuries later. This is not supported by any mainstream theory in historical science. If that was the case then why would they encode this knowledge when it clearly would not be decrypted until several hundred years later and by those whose knowledge was advanced enough to account for the mathematical theorems it presumably illustrates or expresses.
Authorship Question: Green’s work ties into the broader, non-mainstream “Shakespeare authorship question” (the idea that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays). All but a few Shakespeare scholars reject this premise entirely, further marginalizing the theories built upon it.
Conspiracy/Occult Focus: The theory is often promoted alongside discussions of certain secret societies (Rosicrucians, Freemasonry etc), like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, with its esoterica, and grand conspiracies, which tends to distance it from a factual, academic reception.
In essence, while the correlations Alan Green finds may be “insanely coincidental,” critics assert they are the result of a flexible methodology and arrived at by pure chance, rather than any intentional encryption of advanced scientific knowledge it is serendipitously aligned to.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets Equation,
