On Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible. By Charles
Words- worth, Bishop of St. Andrew's. (Smith, Elder, and 00.)--Shakespeare
Weighed in an Even Balance. By the Rev. Alfred Pownall, M.A. (Saunders, Otley, and Co.)—It is amusing to find both these gentlemen particularly anxious to enforce on the reader that they have had no assistance from any similar work. We can assure them that neither production is of a character to make it at all difficult to believe in its
entire originality. That the great poet was well acquainted with the language of the Bible is obvious to every reader. We believe that it
would not be hard to show the same of almost every great master of the
English tongue, and if it is a little more palpable in Shakespeare the reason is simply this, that ho and the translators of the Bible lived at the same time, and therefore used the same idioms. As we have recently
shown (Spectator, April 30, 1864), Shakespeare's mode of thought is not at all Biblical. Of the two writers, Mr. Pownall is the shorter, which
is a great merits nor does he indulge in such professional criticisms as the Bishop, who insists on the peculiar heinousness of the suicide of Romeo and Juliet as being committed "shortly after they had been united in holy matrimony."
Previous page
