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Did You Know?
Cryptology and codes played a role in the 2014/15 Folder Theatre season. The title characters in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart used codes to communicate with their armies on the battlefield and their friends in prison.
The Caesar Cipher:
The Caesar cipher is a substitution code where each letter in the alphabet is replaced by another letter a certain number of steps down the alphabet. The encryptor and the message's intended recipient would agree to a step of 3, for example, and thus A would shift to D, B to E, C to F, and so on.
A Babington Plot:
The Babington Plot takes its name from Antony Babington, who wrote a coded letter to Mary Stuart in prison. The letter detailed elaborate plans for a Spanish invasion of England, the assassination of Queen Elizabeth I and a 100-man rescue of Mary from the prison culminating in her ascension to the English throne.
Although Mary and Babington believed that the cipher they used to encrypt their letters was secure, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, Francis Walsingham, held the key to their code and intercepted every word that passed between them.
Mary Stuart was convicted of treason and executed in February of 1587. Spymaster Francis Walsingham continued to serve Queen Elizabeth until his death in 1590. |