Of the few English books accessible to him in his schooldays, the chief was the English Bible, either in the popular Genevan version, first issued in a complete form in 1560, or in the Bishops’ revision of 1568, which the Authorized Version of 1611 closely followed. References to scriptural characters and incidents are not conspicuous in Shakespeare’s plays but, such as they are, they are drawn from all parts of the Bible and indicate that general acquaintance with the narrative of both Old and New Testaments which a clever boy would be certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at church on Sundays. Shakespeare quotes or adapts biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But, many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and others, which were more recondite, were borrowed from Holinshead’s “Chronicles” and secular works whence he drew his plots. As a rule, his use of scriptural phraseology, as of scriptural history, suggests youthful reminiscence and the assimilative tendency of the mind in a stage of early development rather than close and continuous study of the Bible in adult life.
From: A Life of William Shakespeare by Sidney Lee (London: Spottiswode & Co., 1898), pp. 16-17.
Sir Sidney Lee (1859-1926), biographer and Shakespeare scholar, was heavily involved in editing the first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, beginning in 1883. He was knighted in 1911 and was Professor of English Literature at East London College of the University of London from 1913 to 1924. He was also the author of Shakespeare and the Modern Stage (1906) and The French Renaissance in England (1910). Among his other books were biographies of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.
