Author’s Note.

A considerable portion of the contents of these pages appeared first as an editorial article in the Pioneer Press . By request of many friends, this practical application of Mr. Donnelly’s cipher system to six pages of Hamlet is presented, revised and enlarged, to the general public.

J. G. P.

The Little Cryptogram.

“The Great Cryptogram,” the monumental work in which Mr. Ignatius Donnelly essays to prove that the so-called Shakespeare plays contain a cipher story, discoverable by a system which he has worked out with infinite labor, is at last in the hands of an expectant public. No book so thoroughly advertised has appeared for many a year. For months and months the eye has been assailed by paragraphs and pages in the literature of two worlds, contending for or against the existence in the Shakespeare plays of a cipher that would assign the honor of their authorship to Lord Bacon. It has been admitted on all sides, and declared by Mr. Donnelly himself, that the appearance of this volume would rid the world of a delusion forever, and stamp the successful explorer of the mystery with undying fame, or write [6] him down as the most daring and stupendous literary fraud that all the ages have produced. The author has challenged the test. It is his due that the results of his labor should have a candid and impartial investigation.

Those who are interested in knowing whether “The Great Cryptogram” is a record of discovery or a record of ingenious and plausible invention may pass quickly over the first book of the volume, which deals with “The Argument,” because in this Mr. Donnelly does not lay claim to originality. It is devoted to a careful and systematic marshaling of the circumstantial evidence used in the past to prove that the historical Shakespeare did not write the plays commonly ascribed to him. There is, as every literary man knows, a great deal of evidence that will pass muster under this head. There is an inconsistency between such fragments of a life of Shakespeare as have come down to us, and the experiences and the acquirements which we should declare indispensable to the writing of that matchless drama. It is dwelt upon but lightly here; not because any part of [7] Mr. Donnelly’s work should be slighted, but because it is the cipher discovery by which he must stand or fall. For the same reason it will be unnecessary to deal with the historical objections, equally numerous and unanswerable, to the theory of Baconian authorship. That Mr. Donnelly has made out a plausible and not unreasonable case, no one will deny. As a collector and editor of the works of others; as a curator of the museum in which patches and shreds of fact and theory, gathered from diverse sources, are to be arranged and classified in orderly succession, Mr. Donnelly is a master. His “Atlantis” and “Ragnarok” gave proof of a marvelous memory and a rare ability to dovetail disconnected and discordant facts into a homogeneous whole, such as few can equal. Able to forget what does not accord with his preconceived theory, blessed with a memory as serviceable in dismissing as in retaining, and thoroughly possessed, for the time being, with a conviction that he is pursuing truth, he is the most dexterous of workmen. It is only natural, therefore, that his cumulative evidence from history and [8] fable and gossip should be well presented. He has browsed in the pastures of Delia Bacon and Judge Holmes and Appleton Morgan and Mrs. Potts. He has republished the best of their work, joining the crevices skillfully, and the reader will find himself entertained if not converted by this argument, which occupies more than half of the bulky volume devoted to the cryptogram. This, however, is a well-trodden field. These arguments are but a rehearsal of the clever counsel’s brief. Not to these, but to the Cæsar of the cipher, has Mr. Donnelly appealed for judgment. To the cipher and its mathematical demonstrations he shall go.

Mr. Donnelly claims that there is concealed in the plays not only a declaration that Bacon wrote them, but a detailed history of the times. This is to be read by means of a word cipher, depending on a series of fixed numbers. The root numbers which he gives as the starting point are 505, 506, 513, 516, 523. These numbers are combined, at pleasure, with a vast number of “modifiers.” The latter consist of the number of [9] words in a column, page or subdivision of the play selected; and of these numbers plus or minus the hyphenated and bracketed words. By this method the first two pages attacked yield him the following thirty-four “modifying” numbers: 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 50, 51, 62, 63, 79, 80, 90, 91, 141, 142, 167, 168, 169, 189, 208, 209, 211, 212, 218, 219, 237, 240, 283, 284, 291, 294, 301, and 302. Counting forward or backward, at pleasure, from the top or the bottom of each page, and from the beginning or the end of each scene, he finds himself directed to the specific words that tell the tale; each new count supplying a new “modifier.” He does not tell whence he derives his root numbers—and the world loses little by that—because he is informed by his publishers that there is nothing in our law of copyright to prevent some ingenious fellow, less conscientious than himself, from studying out his whole system, applying it to the rest of the plays, and bursting upon the world with the remainder of the story, which Mr. Donnelly wants to reserve for a future volume and future profits. How well grounded [10] were his apprehensions the appearance of this lesser cryptogram may serve to show. Therefore he wraps himself in congenial mystery, and both his root numbers and his modifiers must be taken on faith. It is hard for the average man, at this point, to repress his scepticism, and to refuse straightforward treatment to a man who advertises for two years a great discovery and then reserves it for the future. There is a strong flavor of the Keeley motor about the process. But not thus unjustly shall the public deal with Minnesota’s gifted son. We, the people, want to get at the bottom of this cipher, and re-read our history of the Elizabethan era and its literature.

The first step is to take an actual illustration of the cipher and Mr. Donnelly’s use of it, in order that the public may see just how the thing works. The names “Shakespeare” and “Cecil” do not occur in the plays. To obtain them, Mr. Donnelly’s arithmetical process points him to the words “shakes” and “peere,” and to the other words “seas” and “ill;” combining the former he gets Shakespeare, and the latter give him [11] Cecil. Now if the reader is the happy possessor of a copy of “The Great Cryptogram,” let him turn to page 718 as a base of operations. If his library is not so enriched, what he finds here is ample for purposes of illustration. This chapter deals with the revelations growing out of the root number 516, judiciously modified. There are 167 words in the second column of page 74 of King Henry IV, following the subdivision made by a stage direction. There are 21 words in brackets, and one hyphenated word, making 22 in all. Add 22 to 167, and you have 189. Subtract 189 from 516, and you have 327. This 327 is combined with other numbers, derived from previous operations; the number of words on an antecedent page or a former column, or some of the “modifiers” that wait modestly till their assistance is needed. Out of these additions and subtractions, perfectly arbitrary in their nature, comes finally a number which directs the searcher to a word on page 76. How intricate are these mathematical operations will be perceived only upon examination. Therefore, the following, taken literally [12] from pages 718, 719, is subjoined as fairly illustrative of the cipher gambols:

Before I proceed to the obviously fair and conclusive test of applying the same numbers and the same method elsewhere, there are some reflections to be noted, which will occur spontaneously to almost every reader. In the first place, the cipher seems, like the man who claimed that he never borrowed the kettle, that he had returned it and that it was cracked when he borrowed it, to prove too much. If it led directly to important disclosures concerning the authorship of the plays or historical events of the time when they were written, and to these alone, it might lay claim to credibility. But this cipher, prepared by Bacon to prevent Shakespeare from stealing his laurels, requires the appropriation of page after page to describe minutely Shakespeare’s personal appearance. A glance at the sample printed will show how great the labor required to encase such a story, by mathematical rule, in the body of the plays. Yet this labor Bacon must have undergone, to tell the coming ages that “He,” Shakespeare, “is troubled with several dangerous diseases; he is subject to the gout in his great toe; and I hear moreover he [14] hath fallen into a consumption.” The spectacle of Bacon, holding weary vigil to complete, at infinite labor, the cipher story, and devoting hours to the construction of a play in which the movement of the plot, the fate of the personæ and the majesty of the dialogue should be unconsidered trifles, subordinated to the all-important infolded chronicle of the fact that Shakespeare had the gout in his great toe, is one for gods to weep at. Nor was this the limit of the Baconian genius. Complicated as is the work of reading this involved tale by the cipher’s help, it bears no comparison to the work of incorporating originally that story in the plays. To write the Donnelly memoirs first, and then so to write the dramas that each word of the one shall fit into its appropriate place in the other, by mathematical rule, would fall little short of miracle. From Archimedes to Olney, there has lived no man who would dare attempt this task. Admiration for Bacon the dramatist, is swallowed up in reverence for Bacon the mathematician, whose equal the world has never seen.

It was necessary, for the benefit of those untaught in the Eleusinian mysteries wherein Mr. Donnelly revels, to make this exemplary statement of his method. Now for the crucial test that shall establish its genuineness. The author begs permission to announce that he has done some cipher work on his own account, following closely Mr. Donnelly’s instructions; and that he has made a discovery scarcely less interesting to a generation of scoffers than that of his illustrious teacher. Nay, nothing but modesty forbids him to claim first prize; for this application of the identical cipher is absolutely confirmatory of its worth, and sheds new lustre on the names of both Donnelly and Bacon. In studying the cryptogram, with the help of Mr. Donnelly’s directions, the thought suggested itself with overwhelming force, must there not be some reference in the plays to the cipher mystery, and some prophecy of the day when this riddle should be read? Fortunately, it happens that this inquiry need not go unanswered. Not everyone has access to the great Shakespeare folio, so called, in the library of Columbia [16] College. But Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, New York, published last year a reduced fac-simile of the famous first folio edition of 1623. In his introduction to this volume, Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, the eminent Shakespearian scholar and critic, says: “For all usual practical objects of study, this cheap reproduction will place its owner on a level with the envied possessors of the far-famed original.” This fac-simile of the 1623 folio, to which alone the cipher applies, has been used in all the researches stimulated by the great cipher discovery. Here was the key and here the treasure house. Not with any desire to rob Mr. Donnelly of future fame, but animated solely by the hope that his work could be proved accurate to the doubter, did the present writer attempt the task of unlocking the secret chamber of genius. It is with more than ordinary pride that he announces a splendid and complete success, which silences forever all cavil as to the cipher.

It was clear that Bacon, with his unparalleled keenness of intellect, must foresee that Hamlet would be pronounced his greatest work. That play [17] would be most minutely scanned and critically studied. It was to Hamlet, therefore, that the trembling neophyte turned as a promising field for exploration. Now, following everywhere the Donnellian method, at what part of Hamlet should a beginning be made? Clearly, one must look for something disconnected from and out of harmony with the rest of that magnificent drama; something obviously dragged in by the breeches for a purpose. Glancing over this old folio, the first obvious interpolation appeared to be the mad songs of Ophelia. Here is matter senseless by itself. To introduce it, the writer was compelled to have Ophelia go mad and talk nonsense. And those stanzas beginning, “Then up he rose and donned his clothes,” are not only foolish but indelicate. Here was a suggestion. It warranted an experiment. It will be remembered that one of Mr. Donnelly’s root numbers is 523. This mad song occurs on page 273 of the folio. Subtracting 273 from 523, we get 250. Count from the top of the column on that page in which the song is found, and the 250th word is “donned,” [18] printed thus, “don’d.” In enumerating, it is to be observed that “its selfe” and “to morrow” make, properly speaking, but one word each, and must be counted so. To point the student at once to the key word, italicized and bracketed words are here included in the count. Now the word “don,” occurring in “Titus Andronicus,” is printed “d’on,” to indicate its formation. Here the apostrophe is omitted, as if to call attention to the combination of letters, “don.” This is at least suspicious.

Acting upon this clue, search is made for the next interpolation. It is found but three pages further on, in the absurd grave-diggers’ scene. This is preceded by the direction, “Enter two clowns.” Now clowns do not dig graves, and grave-diggers are not generally clowns. It was clearly the intention of the writer to call special attention to the following lines. And the passage itself contains matter which is more ridiculous than anything in Ophelia’s crazy words: “If the man go to the water and drown himself, it is will he nill he, he goes; mark you that; but [19] if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself.” What rot is this which the great Bacon utters? There is a rat behind this arras. But how to get at him! We turn for help to the cryptogram. We find, on page 555 of that volume, the account of Mr. Donnelly’s first discovery. He noted the word “Bacon,” on page 53 of I “Henry IV.” He counted the number of italicized words in the first column of that page and found it to be 7; multiplied that number by the page number, and found the product 371; and, lo! the 371st word was “Bacon.” We go back to the grave-diggers. On the page where they are voicing idiocy, there are six italicized words in the first column. The number of the page is 276. Divide 276 by 6, and the quotient is 46. Count upward from the bottom of the second column, and the 46th word is “nill he,” so printed for concealment. This phrase, “will he nill he,” occurs nowhere else in the plays. It is here for a purpose. The mad song gave “Don.” The graveyard scene gives, by Mr. Donnelly’s process, closely followed, “nill he.” “Don nill he;” [20] “Donnelly.” Eureka! we are on the trail of the mystery, and the cipher has been at work here. There must be more behind.

Now, lest anyone should entertain the injurious and erroneous suspicion that this is mere burlesque let it be stated here that what has preceded, and what follows is the result, in every instance, of accurate mathematical work. A few of the Donnelly numbers, and the numbers of pages and of words on a page were used, and no others. The cipher employed is the Donnelly cipher. The words on every page, the italicized words, the bracketed words and the hyphenated words were counted separately and numbered. The edition used is the fac-simile reproduction of the 1623 folio. Every computation has been carefully made. And if any reader doubts, he is requested to procure a copy of the reprint, make the count and verify the figures for himself, and prove to himself that the cipher discovery which follows is as literally worked out, as credible, as truly the work of Lord Bacon as anything to be found from cover to cover of “The Great Cryptogram.”

Turning again to Hamlet, there is circumstantial evidence sufficient to show that the remarkable pointing to the word “Donnelly” could not be a mere coincidence. For example, in the same column with “don,” and but a few lines further on, occurs the expression “most violent author.” Is this an accident? Again, the word “politician,” according to the lexicons, occurs not over half a dozen times in all the plays. It is found twice in these six pages, in intimate connection with the word “Donnelly;” once in the far-fetched expression “life-rendering politician,” which means nothing. Still again, popular nomenclature has designated Mr. Donnelly as “The Sage of Nininger.” By that title he is, perhaps, better known throughout the Northwest than by his legal name. Now the word “sage” is another used less than half a dozen times in all the plays. It is found here; and found in the expression, “sage requiem,” which has so puzzled the commentators that “sage” is omitted in many of the common editions. To put it here, where the cipher required it, the writer of this play was [22] compelled to make his expression meaningless. It is simply impossible that this combination of unusual words, “Donnelly,” “politician,” “author,” “sage,” all jostling each other in passages introduced without relevance to the play, should be an accident. It is deep design. Bacon, looking forward with more than mortal prescience, saw the day when his deliverer would come. And in anticipation of this event, he put into his greatest play, by means of the cipher, the prophecy that is now fulfilled. By one act of transcendent genius, he made it impossible for anyone to reject the revelation which his interpreter should make in the fulness of time.

The cipher key furnished by Mr. Donnelly may now be applied to the last pages of Act IV, and the first of Act V, Hamlet. No attempt will be made to work out the whole story. That gladsome task belongs to Mr. Donnelly himself. But enough may be read to show the wondrous ingenuity of Lord Bacon, and to confirm in him the gift of prophecy. “The Great Cryptogram” furnishes, as before stated, five root numbers; the [23] Hamlet cipher uses but two of these, 516 and 523. Pages 73 and 74 of King Henry IV supplied thirty-four “modifiers;” the Hamlet cipher requires but nine, all told. Three of these, 30, 50 and 198 (the last mentioned being reserved for cases where the cipher-hunter falls into a hole and can not get out without its help) are on Mr. Donnelly’s list. Three more, 273, 274 and 276, are the numbers of the pages of Hamlet to which the cipher is applied most liberally. The remaining three, 306, 397 and 423, are the number of words on these three pages respectively; only those printed in Roman characters and not included within brackets being counted. In general, the system of counting adopted by Mr. Donnelly is followed. But the Hamlet cipher usually regards such forms as “’twere” and “there’s” as two distinct words; while “her selfe” and “to morrow,” as noted above, though printed without the hyphen, constitute but one word each. Bracketed and italicized words are always to be omitted, in the enumeration, except in case of the important initial word “Don,” and the word “out;” [24] and inasmuch as these themselves are found in italics, both bracketed and italicized words are included in computing their numbers on the page.

These instructions as to the method of enumeration being premised, particular attention is called to the extreme simplicity of the Hamlet cipher as compared with the key to Henry IV; which is as profusely numbered as the hairs of the righteous. This table shows at a glance, as will be seen by comparison with the following cipher narrative, all the numbers used in combination to produce the secret story which the author has discovered.

By combining these in different ways, adding or subtracting at pleasure as Mr. Donnelly does, the number of italicized, bracketed and hyphenated words separately, and reserving the right [25] which he claims liberally to increase or decrease the result by 1 arbitrarily, there is obtained in every case the number indicating the given word on each page, reading from top or bottom as the case may be, in its appropriate column. If there is anything wrong with the result, the fault must lie with Lord Bacon and the Great Cryptogram. Here is what the cipher, so amazingly simple in its convolutions, cries out across the centuries since Bacon died to the unbeliever of to-day:

The nineteenth century world may well close its ears to tales of Cecil’s envy and Shakespeare’s gout, and the wrath of the red-haired queen, to listen to the voice of Bacon, saying “Donnelly, the author, politician and mountebanke, will worke out the secret of this play. The Sage is a daysie.”

Columns might be filled in an attempt to notice all the ingenuities of this work. For instance, the bringing in of Ophelia with her flowers, her “rosemary” and “rue,” and her “pansies for thoughts,” solely to introduce the quaint word “daysie;” in order that Lord Bacon might tell his opinion of his great discoverer and defender, in language that would fit the ears of this modern and slangy age. Nor is it possible to do more than barely mention that there can be no difficulty in finding the whole life history of Mr. Donnelly in “Hamlet” and other plays. No doubt the cipher, applied more fully to the pages already considered, would recount his diversions in Minnesota politics. And he is mentioned elsewhere. In “Titus Andronicus,” for example, we have “d’on,” and repeatedly afterward, “kneel.” Still more marked is the [27] reference in Henry V. A French boy is lugged into that play for no purpose but to jabber a language unfamiliar to and hated by an English audience of that day. His “donne,” “donner,” “donnerai,” are repeated, parrot-like, to weariness, obviously to fix attention on that prominent syllable, “don.” And then, but a few pages away, we have, “He is married to Nell Quickly;” “And shall my Nell keep lodgers?” This is no accident, for accident is unknown to the so-called Shakespearian drama. “Don Nell,” “Nell Quickly,” over and over again, are very mileposts leading to the name of Donnelly, and to a cipher story that will reveal to the curious the inwardness of his career. It is no trifle to work out the cipher. To unearth a sentence, especially if you are at all particular as to what that sentence should say, requires hours of the hardest labor. But labor most arduous will not be in vain if applied to this significant and inviting portion of Henry V, by those who bestow on Mr. Donnelly the same reverential admiration that he cherishes for Lord Bacon.

There is, then, a cipher. And this is the recipe. So extraordinary was the command of language on the part of the writer of these plays, that a few pages of any one of them, if separated into single words, will give a vocabulary out of which any given story can be pieced. Pick out the words you need to say what you desire. Count the number of each word from the top or from the bottom of its column. Then, having five root numbers, ten or a dozen modifiers, the number of the page and the number of words on it, also the number of words in italics or connected by hyphens, you have studied addition and subtraction to little purpose if you can not so combine these various numbers that they shall furnish you, at last, with the number that you need to identify the particular word you have chosen. It is hard work. No wonder Mr. Donnelly covered, with figuring, a bundle of paper that a man can scarcely lift. The present writer consumed quires in a simple application of the cipher key to Hamlet. But it pays; whether you want to make money out of a gullible public, or to expose an ambitious fraud. Mr. Donnelly [29] will gather a fortune from his audacious and singularly successful advertisement; and neither friend nor generous enemy will grudge him that. But, out of his profits, he should erect upon the banks of the Mississippi, near his Nininger home, a statue of himself; a noble statue, with the other features in scholarly repose, while the mouth stretches into a capacious grin, and the eyes are fixed upon a volume in the right hand; not a copy of the “Great Cryptogram,” but an edition of the “Shakespeare” plays, opened at that famous passage in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which has been to him a steadfast rule in all his dealings with the world: “What fools these mortals be.”

Transcriber’s Notes

• Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
• Silently corrected obvious errors; non-standard spelling and dialect was left unchanged.