The Little Cryptogram: A Literal Application to the Play of Hamlet of the Cipher System of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly

In Short

This book serves as a brilliant, playful lampoon of Ignatius Donnelly’s The Great Cryptogram, a massive volume that famously argued Francis Bacon encoded his authorship of Shakespeare’s plays through a complex system of root numbers and modifiers. The author, a skeptical journalist, adopts Donnelly’s own methodology to perform a "literal application" on Hamlet. By manipulating page counts, word tallies, and arbitrary arithmetic, he extracts nonsensical yet hilarious "prophecies" about Donnelly himself. It remains a classic example of how numerical obsession can be used to extract any desired meaning from a static text.

The Story

The narrative begins by acknowledging the immense cultural footprint of Donnelly’s The Great Cryptogram, a book that promised to upend literary history by proving Lord Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare. The author sets the stage by characterizing Donnelly as a master of "dovetailing disconnected and discordant facts," noting that while the public was eager for the revelation, the actual system remained shrouded in a "congenial mystery" of shifting root numbers and arbitrary modifiers. The author notes the sheer absurdity of the premise: that the towering intellect of Bacon would choose to devote his life to hiding, via infinite mathematical labor, trivialities like the state of Shakespeare’s gout in a toe.

Driven by a mixture of skepticism and curiosity, the author decides to subject Donnelly’s own logic to a "crucial test." He turns to the 1623 First Folio edition of Hamlet, searching for "interpolations"—passages that seem nonsensical or out of place—which he interprets as the likely sites for the encoded messages. By identifying Ophelia’s "mad songs" and the "rot" uttered by the gravediggers as intentional clues, the author begins his own cipher-work. He discovers that by manipulating specific page numbers, counts of bracketed words, and arbitrary divisors, he can force the text to surrender the syllables "Don," "nill he," and eventually, the name "Donnelly."

The argument reaches a crescendo of irony as the author finds that the cipher "reveals" Bacon’s prescient knowledge of his future interpreter. The text "cries out" across the centuries, linking terms like "politician," "mountebanke," and "sage" to the person of Donnelly. The author treats these findings with the same solemn, scholarly gravity that Donnelly applied to his own work, creating a mirror image of the original theory. He concludes that if the method works for Bacon, it must be equally valid for any purpose the reader desires.

The arc finishes with a final, biting reflection on the nature of the cryptogram itself. The author explains that the "recipe" is essentially a trick of language; because the plays possess such an immense vocabulary, a determined searcher can always isolate the words needed to form any sentence. He characterizes the entire endeavor as a colossal, profitable distraction. He suggests that Donnelly’s true legacy should be a statue of himself on the banks of the Mississippi, holding the plays of Shakespeare and reflecting on the ultimate truth of his project: the foolishness of those who believe that such intricate, manufactured secrets could be hidden in the bones of great art.

How It Unfolds

The challenge of the cipher The author outlines the mechanics of Donnelly’s system, exposing how root numbers like 516 and 523 are combined with arbitrary modifiers—such as hyphenated or bracketed words—to point to specific locations in the text. He highlights the inherent skepticism of a system that reserves its full explanation for a later, more profitable volume.

The search for the rat Turning to Hamlet, the author identifies "senseless" passages like the mad songs and the gravediggers' idiocy as deliberate, forced insertions. By applying the Donnelly method to these specific points, he begins to construct a narrative that points directly toward his own target.

The revelation of the name Using precise, if entirely arbitrary, mathematical operations on the First Folio, the author "unearths" the syllables that spell out the name of the man who proposed the theory. He presents his math with clinical detail, daring the reader to verify the figures and find the same "proof" he has manufactured.

The final interpretation The author demonstrates how the cipher links this name to other "rare" words in the text, such as "sage" and "mountebanke." He concludes that the system is a universal tool, capable of turning any text into a prophecy, provided one is willing to put in the immense, meaningless labor.

The People

The central figures are the absent, lofty Francis Bacon, whom the author imagines as a man of such "unparalleled keenness of intellect" that he would sacrifice the majesty of his plays just to document Shakespeare’s ailments; the ambitious Ignatius Donnelly, the "Sage of Nininger," who is presented as a brilliant but deceptive showman turning literary criticism into a lucrative, pseudoscientific performance; and the Author himself, who acts as the cool-headed, ironic guide. While Bacon remains a silent, impossible architect in this narrative, and Donnelly remains the target of the satire, the Author evolves from an impartial observer of a "literary fraud" into a mischievous mirror-holder, proving through his own "discoveries" that any system built on flexible, arbitrary rules can be used to prove absolutely anything.

In Its Own Voice

Regarding the absurdity of Bacon’s alleged motivation, the author notes:

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.

After successfully "decoding" his own message from the text, the author triumphantly concludes:

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.”

What It's Really About

The book is a trenchant meditation on the dangers of confirmation bias and the elasticity of textual analysis. It argues that if a system is sufficiently complex and allows for arbitrary adjustments—such as "adding or subtracting at pleasure"—it loses all objective validity. The "secret" being uncovered is not a historical fact, but the inherent flaw in any interpretive framework that starts with a conclusion and works backward to find evidence. It questions the limits of intellectual authority, suggesting that when a researcher becomes "thoroughly possessed" by a theory, they lose the ability to distinguish between genuine discovery and the projection of their own biases onto the page.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy intellectual sparring, satire, and the history of literary hoaxes will find this book immensely satisfying. It is a masterclass in tone, maintaining a facade of absolute, scholarly seriousness while deconstructing a ridiculous premise. The prose is precise and rhythmic, capturing the intellectual fervor of the late 19th century. However, modern readers should be prepared for the dense, technical nature of the cipher calculations; while the author intends them to be absurd, they occupy a significant portion of the text. The book also reflects the period's specific preoccupation with the Baconian theory, a subject that has largely faded from mainstream literary discourse. Despite this, the underlying lesson—that one must remain wary of "mathematical proof" applied to art—remains timeless. It is a rewarding read for anyone who has ever suspected that "evidence" can be manufactured by someone with enough time and a sufficiently flexible set of rules. It leaves the reader with a lasting appreciation for the skepticism required to distinguish between a genuine revelation and a clever, well-advertised trick.