TOP SECRET: From Shakespeare to the NSA

K%d8Dsd@c8W^1.

Or, to put it plainly: Calling all codebreakers.

If youre ready for something more challenging much more challenging than sudokus and crossword puzzles, check out Decoding the Renaissance, the new exhibit that opens Tuesday at the Folger Library.

Shakespeare noted thatuneducated folks know not how/To cipher what is writ in learned books, but these learned books are a cipher to everybody.

Among the unfathomable mysteries on display is theVoynich Manuscript. This magicallyillustrated book, on loan from Yale University for the first time, is written in a language that scholars have failed to decipher since the 15th century. Perhaps the thousands of spies slinking around Washington, D.C., can finally crack the code.

Strange as it might seem among the antiquemanuscripts atthe Shakespeare library, youll also findaSIGABA codemachine from theNSAs National Cryptologic Museum. The basic principle of that device wheels within wheels! stems fromthe first text written in the West in the late 1400son the subject of ciphers.

In fact, its the curious connectionbetween the Folger and the NSA that inspired curatorBill Shermanto create this show. Sherman, who wrote his dissertation on John Dee, Queen Elizabeths wizardly adviser, was a fellow at the Folger from2011-12 when he began studyingintelligence in the intellectual sense and the military sense during the Renaissance.

He couldnt have found more fertile ground. The Folger and the Library of Congress, he said, offer the biggest concentration of rare books on this particular field of codes and ciphers. That was when I knew we had a show: Without going outsidea single block, I could get most of the materialI needed.

The lynchpin of the new exhibitisWilliam Friedman, whose unlikely career links Shakespeare scholarship to Cold War cryptography. Friedman and his wife got their start in the early 20th century working for an eccentric millionairewho was determined to prove that Francis Bacon was the secret author of the Bards plays.

That futile project failed, but in the process, Friedman became an expert in codes and ciphers. When World War II began, the U.S. military realized he had the skills they needed. He remained in the field for decades, and he and his colleagues eventually broke Japans Purple cipherduring the war.

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TOP SECRET: From Shakespeare to the NSA