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Last Updated ( Apr 23, 2010 at 08:58 AM )
HENRY NEVILLE and the SHAKESPEARE CODE- book description
also available through Amazon worldwide [please click here for UK details.]
HENRYNEVILLE AND THE SHAKESPEARE CODE
by BrendaJames
A Jacobean code hid the true authorship of the works attributed to William Shakespeare. This and other recent discoveries are described in Henry Neville and the Shakespeare Code by Brenda James. Brenda stumbled across the identity of Sir Henry Neville when looking at the Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets. “The Dedication is known to be rather odd – its layout, its wording, etc. It immediately looks like some kind of code. It was certainly designed to make the reader probe further,” says James. “After many years of study I applied a 16th century decoding method to its plain text. It revealed a name which I had never encountered before in connection with Shakespeare – Henry Neville. What’s more, the decoding method itself echoed the strange linguistic hints in the Dedication’s text, so there was immediately a sign that the method I applied was the correct one.
TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF .
THESE . INSVING . SONNET S .
Mr .W. H . ALL . HAPP INESSE .
AND . THAT . ETERNITIE .
PROMISED .
BY .
OVR . EVER-LIVING . POET .
WISHETH .
T HE .WELL-WISHING .
ADVENTVRER . IN .
SETTING .
FORTH .
Above: A transcript of the Dedication which accompanied the first edition of the Sonnets.
The final words of the Dedication (SETTING FORTH) provided the keywords and method necessary for rearranging the order of the letters – in fact the Dedication became a classic transformation code.
SETTING FORTH, also turned out to be a pun, because it was in the FOURTH SETTING of this transformation code that the message THE WISE THORP HID THY POET actually appeared. (Thomas Thorpe was the publisher of the Sonnets.) This could not have happened by chance, and one reviewer of the book - Dr. John Casson - noticed something else: the words THE WISE THOTH also appeared right across the page, and John knew immediately that Thoth was actually the Egyptian god of writing. James found that Neville’s name was revealed when the code was transformed four times again - but in a different way. The words HE ONLIE BE OF THE SEIN, HENRY, POET appeared - symmetrically, just as the first message had done. And underneath the word POET, the name NEWELL was formed in two separate clusters of letters.” (The spelling of his name is just as it appears on Neville’s baptismal record.)
James did not immediately realise the significance of the name in the code - she had not set out to find an alternative authorship ‘candidate.’ However, Neville’s birth and death dates (1564 - 1615) were virtually identical to those of Shakespeare and further research revealed the details of Sir Henry’s life – they corresponded step by step with the concerns in Shakespeare’s plays. This was too much to be mere coincidence: research now began to support the Code’s statement that Henry Neville was the true poet. Sir Henry Neville was primarily a politician and linguist, and he ran an ironworks from the 1580s to 90s - a business which he inherited from h is great uncle, Sir Thomas Gresham (who had been shipping cannons to the King of Denmark for use at Elsinor - the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet) [Hamlet contains more references to cannons than any other Shakespeare play.] Neville had been the Ambassador to France, (hence the reference to the Seine in the code) for fifteen months before his imprisonment in the Tower of London, alongside his friend, the Earl of Southampton, following the Essex uprising. And at this time – under the stress of imprisonment – the plays suddenly turn to tragedy...
Every other aspect of Neville’s life and knowledge also substantiated the Code’s claims: the comp rehensive list of circumstantial, experential and educational ‘overlapping’ between Neville’s life and the interests and knowledge encapsulated in the Shakespeare plays is overwhelming. No one else matches the Shakespeare footprint so comprehensively as Sir Henry Neville. The book outlines James’ investigation and previously unpublished material, after her trail of primary sources through Record Offices up and down the country, and through Sir Henry’s travels on the continent. A plethora of circumstantial and documentary evidence surfaced.
As James remarks, “The circumstantial evidence on its own - which is much more weighty than that mentioned briefly here - is already great enough for George Orwell to ‘call the secret service’, but when it is coupled with documentary evidence, plus the Code’s decipherment, then it is well-nigh impossible to ignore or gainsay. Logically and topologically speaking, Neville is Shakespeare.”
One example of Neville's name found in one 'setting' of the Dedication Code is shown below .
The Dedication contains 144 letters. The first logical 'setting' of these is therefore in a 12 x 12 matrix. This produced a second line which is a perfect anagram of TEST THE FORGE. [Neville inherited and ran the Mayfield Iron works in Sussex.] When the columns of the matrix are re-arranged to form this sentence, then the name HENRY NEVIL appears in the shape of a hammer. It is hard to imagine that mere coincidence could be so elastic, especially when Henry Neville's name had already appeared in other, mathematically-determined layouts too, as is fully explained in the book.)
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THE BOOK ALSO CONTAINS DETAILS OF FURTHER RESEARCH, TOGETHER WITH CHAPTERS DEVOTED TO THE SONNETS:
Contents
Chapter 1
THE SHAKESPEARE MYTH AND THE NAME IN THE CODE
Chapter 2
TO BE OR NOT TO BE SHAKESPEARE
Chapter 3
A VOYAGE AROUND SIR HENRY NEVILLE AS SHAKESPEARE
Chapter 4
CODES AND FUNCTIONS - THE BACKGROUND TO THE
DEDICATION CODE
Chapter 5
ENCODING ‘NEVILLE’ IN THE SONNETS AND THE PLAYS
Chapter 6
THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, HENRYNEVILLE AND A
PLANTAGENET REVIVAL
Chapter 7
THE STRANGE SONNETS AND THEIR CONCEALED AUTHOR
Chapter 8
THE QUEST FOR THE DARK LADY
Chapter 9
SON OF THE DARK LADY?
Chapter 10
NEVILE , BEVILE AND THE KING’S SECRET WRITER.
Chapter 11
THE DARK GHOSTS OF NEVILLES PAST
Chapter 12
THE LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE AND NEVILLE
Chapter 13
BENJONSON, THE CORNISH LADY, AND THE FIRST FOLIO
Addendum
THE CODE AND ITS DOUBLE
Summary
HenryNeville - The Real Shakespeare
Summary of his life including further notes concerning links with the
Saturday 7th June was a landmark for Shakespeare-Neville studies.The case for HenryNeville’s authorship of the plays was presented at a first whole-day Symposium devoted to his memory. Speakers included GeorgeSayn, Dr.JohnCasson,Dr.OliviaLousada and BrendaJames, whose new book, Henry Neville and the Shakespeare Code was published last month.
Delegates comprised eminent guests, ranging from drama professionals to scholars and scientists, who find in HenryNeville the most logical and best-evidenced candidate for the Shakespeare authorship.
BrendaJames’ HenryNeville theory was first published in The Truth Will Out(Longman, 2005) but her process of unravelling the Jacobean code within the Shakespeare Sonnets’ Dedication (which led to her discovery and subsequent research) appears for the first time in her new book.
The Symposium began with a scholarly and lively address from GeorgeSayn. He explained how his own primary research and European-wide pursuit of the Authorship Question had led him to three inevitable conclusions: 1) that ‘Shakespeare’ was merely a pseudonym, 2) that none of the then candidates fitted either the psychological or evidential patterns presented in the plays, and 3) that the true author must have had some connections with the Digges family.On hearing Brenda’s interview on the Today Programme in 2005, George was immediately impressed.He’d come across HenryNeville in his studies, and suddenly everything fitted into place.Reading her theory and further research in The Truth Will Out convinced George that Neville was indeed the true author.
Next, Brenda explained the background to the code which revealed Neville’s name, together with her decryption process.This was followed by Dr.JohnCasson’s Paper, which concerned underlying psychological pointers to Neville’s authorship, witnessed throughout the ‘Shakespeare’ works. First and foremost, John explained movingly how Neville’s early loss of his mother is reflected in so many of the Shakespeare plays. [An extended version of John’s paper will appear in a future edition of The Journal of Neville Studies.]
The afternoon session began with BrendaJames’ Paper on her discovery of HenryNeville’s Tower Notebook, with especial reference to how some of Neville’s notes impinge on the stage production of HenryVIII. The day ended with OliviaLousada’s stimulating workshop on Twelfth Night.
More Symposia are planned , and forward information on these will appear on this page of the website.
THE HENRY NEVILLE DAYSYMPOSIUM - REPORT
Last Updated ( Mar 24, 2009 at 04:50 PM )
THE JOURNAL OF NEVILLE STUDIES
Written by Brenda James
Oct 05, 2007 at 02:05 PM
Revised 24th March, 2009
FOR A CCESS TO ALL THE ITEMS AVAILABLE ON THIS WEBSITE, PLEASE CLICK
-EVIDENCE FOR THE AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE-NEVILLE IN DOUBLE FALSHOOD:
THE 'LOST' PLAY OF CARDENIOby JohnCasson with BrendaJames
-A NEW INTERPRETATION OF EPIGRAM 77 BY BENJONSONby JohnCasson
-THE TANGLED WORLD OF ELIZABETHAN ESPIONAGE: HENRYNEVILLE AND CHARLESPAGET, DOUBLE AGENTby BrendaJames
-SHAKESPEARE-NEVILLE, FORESTS, ISLANDS AND FOLKLOREby BrendaJames
-SHAKESPEARE, NEVILLE AND THE IRON MEN OF THE THEATRE by Brenda James (Addresses the question of the patronage problem surrounding William Shakespeare and examines the connections between Henry Neville and the Theatre, together with investigating the financial background of other Theatrical entrepreneurs of the time.)
SECTION 2 – [Essays and Commentaries by Brenda James]
- 1.WINWOOD'S MEMORIALS OF STATE
- INTRODUCTION TO, and articles on WINWOOD'S MEMORIALS OF STATE, (Winwood's Memorials was produced by Edmund Sawyer in 1724. It is a collection of diplomatic and other letters of the 16th and 17th centuries.)
- Patronage - Sawyer and Walpole
- 2.General Introduction to a Selection of Extracts from relevant letters which were not included in Winwood's Memorials.
- 3. Part One of TRANSCRIPTIONS OF NEVILLE'S LETTERS AND DISPATCHES, from Winwood's Memorials
Articles
