To be or not to be -- that is the question."
"My words go up,
my thoughts remain below Words without thoughts ne'er to Heaven go."
uotes and phrases of William Shakespeare, the greatest of all English
writers have become part and parcel of our culture and speech, but much
about the man's life and beliefs remains mysterious. Even the date of
his death is not certain, although it is generally thought that he died
on this date, April 23, 1616. This would have
been almost on Shakespeare's 52nd birthday (he was baptized the 26th of
April, 1564 probably a few days after his birth).
Was Shakespeare a true Christian? Some of the anecdotes about his
life make that doubtful. Nonetheless, a month before his death, he wrote
his will, which he concluded by saying, "I commend my soul into the
hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing through the only
merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour to be made partaker of life
everlasting."
He instructed that his tombstone to be inscribed:
"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust
enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones."
Shakespeare also seems to have been a faithful member of the Church
of England. Though he never wrote a play on a Biblical story, the Bible
and the
Book of Common Prayer were the most frequently quoted
sources in his work. He quotes or alludes to passages from at least 42
books of the Bible; and phrases from the morning and evening prayers in
the
Book of Common Prayer are frequent. Of the books of the
Bible, Shakespeare quoted from Matthew 151 times and from the Psalms 137
times.
Some have speculated that the King James Version of the Bible
contains a cryptogram for Shakespeare. If you look at the 46th psalm in
the King James translation, the 46th word from the beginning is "shake"
and the 46th word from the end is "spear." Interestingly, Shakespeare
was 46 when the translation was made in 1610! Did Shakespeare help with
the translation work? There is no serious basis for such conjecture.
Indeed, there is serious scholarship that argues that Shakespeare did
not even author the works attributed to him. One way or the other,
Shakespeare took his secrets (spiritual and otherwise) to the grave with him when he died around
this date almost 400 years ago.
Bibliography:
- Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.
- Garrison, Webb. Strange Facts About the Bible. Nashville:
Abington Press, 1968.
- Michell, John. Who Wrote Shakespeare? London: Thames and
Hudson, 1996.
- "Shakespeare, William." Encyclopedia Britannica.
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968.
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