This article throws some light on William Shakespeare and the
Bible. The Oxfordians, the Grevilles and other doubters of
Shakespeare's authorship might bear it in mind when questioning
his lack of experience and knowledge :
(Primary sources: Thomas Carter’s Shakespeare and Holy Scripture and Peter Milward’s Shakespeare's Religious Background)
Short history of the English Bible
1537 Coverdale Bible (earliest complete English Bible). Matthew's Bible
1539 The Great Bible. Cranmer publisher; 11,000 published in seven editions over two year period
1560 Geneva Bible. Informed by the scholarship of the Reformation. The first version divided into chapter and verses; contained copious notes, a commentary, a concordance, and tables of Scriptural names; in 1579 the Calvinistic catechism, the Church Service, and a Psalter were added. Because of its relative low cost, it was an extremely popular version. Between 1560-1630 went through 160 editions; became the household Bible of the people; far over-shadowed the Great Bible.
1568 The Bishop's Bible. Commissioned by Archbishop Parker; had a life of 40 yrs., went through 19 editions, was large, and very expensive.
1609 Douai Bible. The Roman Catholic version.
1611 The Authorized or King James Bible. Work began in 1604 by a committee of scholars headed by the noted classic scholar from Cambridge, John Bois, born in 1560, four years before Shakespeare. Guided by his father, by the time Bois was six, he had read the entire Bible in Hebrew. The committee was split into six groups of translators: two in Westminster, two in Oxford, and two in Cambridge. Each of these committees had at least eight scholars. After six years of meticulous work, the six groups sent their work to London for a final review. Bois was on the final six member review committee. From extensive notes he took during this process we can see how tirelessly the final committee worked to hone the translation to “perfection.” Indeed, the final review committee’s last benchmark was to insure they produced a translation that not only read better than other versions but also sounded better.
Uses a scant 8,000 different words. Shakespeare, by contrast, uses approximately 30,000 different words in his corpus. The average educated person today has a vocabulary of perhaps 15,000 words.
The significance of Shakespeare's use of the Bible
Shakespeare,
born in 1564, probably was exposed to the Great Bible, the Bishop's
Bible, and the Geneva Bible. A close study of
his use of Scripture in his work confirms that he probably learned
the Bible through the Geneva version. Thomas Carter in Shakespeare
and Holy Scripture argues that "no writer has assimilated the
thoughts and reproduced the words of Holy Scripture more copiously
than Shakespeare." According to another critic, Shakespeare "is
saturated with the Bible story".
Carter further argues that
Shakespeare's plays demonstrate a mind "richly
stored with the thoughts and words of the English Bible". He
then infers that Shakespeare probably gained this knowledge in childhood
as that is the time we most easily become grounded in memorizing
Scripture. Yet his familiarity with the Bible neither
means he always uses it in a religious sense nor that he was a Christian--it
is never good literary criticism to take the words of an author's
characters and ascribe them to the author.
According to Peter Milward
(Shakespeare's Religious Background), Shakespeare's familiarity with
the Bible is extensive. There
is hardly a book in the OT or NT which is not represented in his
plays; this argues for his close knowledge of Scripture. The
books he seems to have known most thoroughly, even in places by heart,
are Genesis, Job, the Psalms, Ecclesiasticus, Matthew, Luke, and
Romans. In his use of them he does not merely borrow an occasional
phrase or allusion for enrichment of the dramatic language, but he
derives the central ideas and images that run through all his plays. It
might be possible to characterize each stage of his dramatic development
in terms of some major Biblical influence.
The comedies, Milward
says, turn on the great texts on marriage from Genesis, Matthew,
and Ephesians; the history plays on the treatment of kingship as
a sacred institution in the books of Samuel; the problem plays, on
the Pauline theology of sin and redemption; the great tragedies on
the accounts of Adam's sin and the passion of Christ; the romances
on Christ's teaching of forgiveness and Paul's proclamation of new
life in Jesus Christ. Each play, of course, treats a secular
subject in a secular way, but its thought is invariably charged with
religious overtones, largely in virtue of the frequent though subtle
Biblical allusions. In brief, it may be said that Shakespeare's
view of human life in neither more nor less than the Biblical view
with the imperfections of the OT supplemented by the teaching and
life of Christ in the NT.
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Another article offers further information
about William Shakespeare and the Bible.
By some accounts, William Shakespeare’s tragedy, “King
Lear,” is the Bible in miniature and features biblical components
including wisdom and divine justice, parables and miracles.
A scene in Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” seems to
mimic Judas’ kiss of betrayal before Jesus is crucified.
If Coon Rapids resident Jim Bofenkamp has anything to say about it,
those who read Shakespeare’s plays will recognize and appreciate
how much the playwright borrowed from the Bible as he created plots
and scenes, dialogue and characters.
For the last two years, Bofenkamp has taught a “Shakespeare
and the Bible” class, meeting at Faith Lutheran and Epiphany
Catholic churches in Coon Rapids and exploring and uncovering the
connection between the bard and the Bible.
According to some Shakespearean experts, there is hardly a book
in the Old or New Testament which is not represented in Shakespeare’s
plays.
And Bofenkamp is of the same mind on the matter.
“I started writing a paper on ‘Coriolanus’ and
came up with tons of similarities (between the play and the Bible),” Bofenkamp
said.
“I thought if there is this much biblical material in one play,
what is there in the other ones,” he said, describing his entry
into the treasure hunt of uncovering the connections between Shakespeare
and the Bible.
Bofenkamp’s original attraction to all things Shakespearean
began more than four decades ago, when as a sixth-grader, he read “Midsummer
Night’s Dream.”
His recent investigations into Shakespeare’s works have only
deepened that fascination, Bofenkamp said.