Scatter Brained

FRANCIS BACON (1561–1626)
Bacon was a philosopher, essayist, and politician whose bril-
liant mind and humanist bent seem to fi t Shakespeare’s work 

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like a glove. Turn-of-the-century cryptographers latched 
onto the word 
honorifi cabilitudinitatibus,
 found in act 5, scene 1 
of 
Love’s Labour’s Lost,
 as evi-
dence. By rearranging its many 
letters, they spelled 
hi ludi, F. 
Baconis nati, tuiti orbi,
 a Latin 
anagram that translates to 
“these  plays,  F.  Bacon’s  off -
spring, are preserved for the 
world.” Later cryptographers, 
however, also found anagrams 
“proving” authorship by Dante 
Alighieri and Babe Ruth.