© Gunnar Tómasson

5 August 2016

Background

„It is impossible to help but notice now and then that Armado [of Shakespeare’s ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’] is extraordinarily like Don Quixote in his consistent overestimate of himself and in his insistence on imagining himself a superhuman storybook hero. […]

„There is something rather pleasant in the thought that Shakespeare might be borrowing from Miguel de Cervantes, the Spanish author of the Don Quixote saga, since Cervantes was almost an exact contemporary of Shakespeare’s and by all odds one of the few writers, on the basis of Don Quixote alone, worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with Shakespeare. „There is only one catch, but that is a fatal one. The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605, a dozen years at least after Love’s Labor’s Lost was written.“ (Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, Avenel Books, New York, 1978, Vol, I, pp. 431-2.)

„Another curious case of cryptography was presented to the public in 1917 by one of the best of the SHAKESPEARE scholars, Dr. Alfred von Weber Ebenhoff of Vienna.  Employing the same systems previously applied to the works of Bacon, he began to examine the works of Cervantes…. Pursuing the investigation, he discovered overwhelming material evidence: the first English translation of Don Quixote bears corrections in Bacon’s hand.  He concluded that this English version was the original of the novel and that Cervantes had published a Spanish translation of it.“ (J. Duchaussoy, Bacon, Shakespeare ou Saint-Germain?, Paris, La Colombe, 1962, p. 122 – in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, New York, 1989, p. 406.)

EL INGENIOSO HIDALGO DON QVIXOTE DE LA MANCHA

Original Spanish title – Cipher Value:

17616

         1 = Monad

3003 = 30 May – 3rd month old-style

1593 = 1593 – Date of Christopher Morley’s “murder”

7615 = Get thee hence, Satan.

3858 = The Devil

-9838 = Christopher Morley

11384 = Christopher Marlowe

17616

***

I. Don Quixote Makes His Will and Dies

(Volume II, Final chapter)

1759088

   27611 = With this he closed his will, and a faintness coming over him

20949 = he stretched himself out at full length on the bed.

20696 = All were in a flutter and made haste to relieve him,

17463 = and during the three days he lived after that

22342 = on which he made his will he fainted away very often.

15040 = The house was all in confusion;

20167 = but still the niece ate and the housekeeper drank

12398 = and Sancho Panza enjoyed himself;

32419 = for inheriting property wipes out or softens down in the heir

24346 = the feeling of grief the dead man might be expected to leave behind him.

28268 = At last Don Quixote´s end came, after he had received all the sacraments,

34228 = and had in full and forcible terms expressed his detestation of books of chivalry.

29542 = The notary was there at the time, and he said that in no book of chivalry

22647 = had he ever read of any knight-errant dying in his bed so calmly

16455 = and so like a Christian as Don Quixote,

32055 = who amid the tears and lamentations of all present yielded up his spirit,

7696 = that is to say died.

27750 = On perceiving it the curate begged the notary to bear witness

29391 = that Alonso Quixano the Good, commonly called Don Quixote de la Mancha,

22750 = had passed away from his present life, and died naturally;

30091 = and said he desired his testimony in order to remove the possibility

26809 = of any other author save Cid Hamet Benengeli bringing him to life again

27497 = falsely and making interminable stories out of his achievements.

23169 = Such was the end of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha,

24671 = whose village Cid Hamet would not indicate precisely,

23243 = in order to leave all the towns and villages of La Mancha

24798 = to contend among themselves for the right to adopt him

27775 = and claim him as a son, as the seven cities of Greece contended for Homer.

28591 = The lamentation of Sancho and the niece and housekeeper are omitted here,

17685 = as well as the epitaphs upon his tomb;

22950 = Samson Carrasco, however, put the following:

11623 = A doughty gentleman lies here;

11939 = A stranger all his life to fear;

14963 = Not in his death could Death prevail,

16017 = In that lost hour, to make him quail.

15296 = He for the world but little cared;

17159 = And at his feats the world was scared;

10863 = A crazy man his life he passed,

12887 = But in his senses died at last.

15030 = And said most sage Cid Hamet to his pen:

25477 = “Rest here, hung up by this brass wire, upon this shelf,

27926 = O my pen, whether of skilful make or clumsy cut I know not;

15421 = here shalt thou remain long ages hence,

26534 = unless presumptuous or malignant story-tellers

13437 = take thee down to profane thee.

16626 = But ere they touch thee warn them, and,

13996 = as best thou canst, say to them:

15774 = Hold off! ye weaklings; hold your hands!

9994 = Adventure it let none,

14681 = For this emprise, my lord the king,

9772 = Was meant for me alone.

20431 = For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him;

31410 = it was his to act; mine to write; we two together make but one,

35538 = notwithstanding and in spite of that pretended Tordesillesque writer

30371 = who has ventured or would venture with his great, coarse,

34627 = ill-trimmed ostrich quill to write the achievements of my valiant knight;

29557 = – no burden for his shoulders, nor subject for his frozen wit:

24780 = whom, if perchance thou shouldst come to know him,

23130 = thou shalt warn to leave at rest where they lie

20061 = the weary mouldering bones of Don  Quixote,

15642 = and not to attempt to carry him off,

26493 = in opposition to all the privileges of death, to Old Castile,

27957 = making him rise from his grave where in reality and truth he lies

36720 = stretched at full length, powerless to make any third expedition or new sally;

14435 = for the two that he has already made,

16864 = so much to the enjoyment and approval

20027 = of everybody to whom they have become known,

18913 = in this as well as in foreign countries,

30193 = are quite sufficient for the purpose of turning into ridicule

27940 = the whole of those made by the whole set of the knights-errant;

23655 = and so doing shalt thou discharge thy Christian calling,

24714 = giving good counsel to one that bears ill-will to thee.

24111 = And I shall remain satisfied, and proud to have been the first

34507 = who has ever enjoined the fruit of his writings as fully as he could desire;

19183 = for my desire has been no other than to deliver

15638 = over to the detestation of mankind

21030 = the false and foolish tales of the books of chivalry,

21948 = which, thanks to that of my true Don Quixote,

27765 = are even now tottering, and doubtless doomed to fall forever.

       4541 = Farewell.

1759088

V + VI = 1338633 + 420455 = 1759088

***

Calculator for converting letters to cipher values is at:

http://www.light-of-truth.com/ciphersaga.htm