Shakespeare and the King James Bible (Detroit Free Press 1920)

 

From the Detroit Free Press 1920:

The Harvard Faculty has done the cause of American culture solid service by demanding that all students who concentrate in English or in ancient or modern languages shall have a good working acquaintance with the English Bible and with twelve plays of Shakespeare when they appear for their final examination. Without this knowledge there is to be no graduation.

The announcement setting forth the requirements laid down is significant and fully interpretative of the action of the faculty. It says that the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare are works of literature without which an adequate appreciation of English letters is impossible, and it adds:

"The King James version of the Bible is one of the great monuments of English prose, but any standard version, ancient or modern, may be used. The plays of Shakespeare as foremost among the masterpieces of the English tongue are indispensable to all students of literature. Moreover, the language of Shakespeare, like that of the Bible, has become part and parcel of our familiar speech."

Considered purely from the educational standpoint, the fragmentary knowledge of the text of the English Bible possessed by tens of millions of Americans is a deplorable, almost appalling, thing. And the widespread lack of knowledge regarding even the relatively best known of the plays of William Shakespeare is absolutely pitiable. Altogether the prevalent and, we fear, growing ignorance of the contents of the Bible and the works of the bard of Stratford is responsible for a large amount of superficiality and flatness of outlook among present-day Americans, and it is refreshing to find the oldest institution of higher learning in this country taking so firm and thoroughgoing a stand in behalf of these fundamental masterpieces of the language. 

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Christopher Marlowe on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Christopher Marlowe was born on this day in 1564.

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Some scholars believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright.

Did you know: Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh among others were in a group called The School of Night. The School of Night was a group of atheists. Anyone who was an atheist at that time were considered enemies of God and the state, by association.

One wonders if the Elizabethan occultist John Dee and Christopher Marlowe knew each other. Shakespeare, who knew Dee, hints in Love's labours Lost of a "School of Night". Shakespeare learned of Giordano Bruno from Dee, and made him the model for magus in the Tempest.

 Marlowe died violently in 1593 at the young age of 29.

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Who Really Wrote Shakespeare's Plays? 50 Books to Download

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Contents:

The authorship of Shakespeare's plays has long been in dispute and heated up the printing presses in the past just as this mystery does today. Here are over 50 books on this interesting topic:

Delia Bacon- a Biographical Sketch by Theodore Bacon
Delia Bacon was best known for her work on Shakespearean authorship.
Bacon intended to prove that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare were written by a coterie of men, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system, for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. This system she set out to discover beneath the superficial text of the plays.

The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded by Delia Bacon

SHAKESPEARE, BACON AND THE GREAT UNKNOWN by Andrew Lang
"The theory that Francis Bacon was, in the main, the author of "Shakespeare's plays," has now been for fifty years before the learned world."

Bacon is Shake-Speare by Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence

Shakespeare - Bacon by DC Dodge 1916

Brief for plaintiff: Bacon vs. Shakespeare by Edwin Reed 1892

Bacon Cryptograms in Shakespeare by Isaac Platt 1905

Bacon and Shakespeare by Albert Calvert 1902

Shakespeare or Bacon by Sir T Martin 1888

Bacon versus Shakespeare by Thomas King 1875

Coincidences, Bacon and Shakespeare by Edwin Reed 1906

Bacon and Shakespeare parallelisms by Edwin Reed 1902

Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare - The Baconian Mint by Batchelor 1910

Francis Bacon and his Shakespeare by Theron Dixon 1895

Shakespeare-Bacon, an essay by Edward Smithson 1899

Bacon's secret disclosed in contempoary books by Granville Cuningham 1911

The Shakespeare Myth by Edwin Durning-Smith 1912

Was the Shakespeare after all a Myth by John De Peyster 1888

The Bacon Craze; An Answer to The Shakspeare Myth, by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence 1912

The Shakespearean Myth: William Shakespeare and Circumstantial Evidence by Morgan Appleton

The Greatest of Literary Problems, the Authorship of the Shakespeare works by James Baster 1917

What we Really Know about Shakespeare by Carolina Dall 1886

Who Wrote Shakespeare by William Henderson 1887

Studies on the text of Shakespeare by John Bulloch 1878

The problem of the Shakespeare plays by George Bompas 1902

The authorship of Shakespeare by Nathaniel Holmes 1887

The Silent Shakespeare by Robert Frazer 1915

Shakespeare, Bacon, Jonson and Greene By Edward James Castle 1897

The Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of "King Henry VI" by Tucker Brooke 1912

Shakespeare as a Plagiarist - Article in the Galaxy Magazine 1870

The Shakespeare papers of the late William Maginn 1856

The Shakespeare Problem Restated by GG Greenwood 1908

Is there any resemblance between Shakespeare & Bacon? by Charles Steel 1888

William Shakespere, of Stratford-on-Avon. His epitaph unearthed, and the author of the plays run to ground by Scott Surtees 1888 (Claims Sir Anthony Sherley was the true author of Shakespeare's plays)

The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the so-called Shakespeare plays by Ignatius Donnelly 1888

Shakespeare identified in Edward De Vere by Thomas Looney 1920

Is it Shakespeare? The great question of Elizabethan literature by Walter Begley 1903

Is it Shakespeare's Confession by Herbert Janvrin Browne 1887

No Cipher in Shakespeare: Being a Refutation of Ignatius Donnelly's "Great Cryptogram" 1888

Notes on the Bacon-Shakespeare question by Charles Allen 1900

It was Marlowe. A story of the secret of three centuries by Wilbur Zeigler 1895

Bibliography of the Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy by William Wyman 1884

Contemporary Evidence of Shakespeare's identity by Richard Ashhurst 1903

Shakespeare and the rival poet by A Acheson 1903

Boycotted Shakespeare facts by John Denham Parsons (might have a few pages missing) 1920

Lord Penzance on the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy 1902

Did Shakespeare Write Titus Andronicus by JM Robertson 1905

The Problem of Hamlet by JM Robertson 1920

The Problem of the Merry Wives of Windsor by JM Robertson 1916

PLUS YOU GET...

A study of the supernatural in three plays of Shakespeare

What was the Religion of Shakespeare by MM Mangasarian

Shakespeare's Use of the Supernatural by J Paul SR Gibson 1908

Shakespeare and the supernatural; a brief study of folklore, superstition, and witchcraft in 'Macbeth,' 'Midsummer night's dream' and 'The tempest,' by Margaret Lucy 1905

The Bible in Shakespeare - A Study of the Works of Shakespeare in Relation to the Bible with Numerous Parallel Passages, Quotations and References by William Burgess 1903

The Family Shakespeare by Thomas Bowdler 1847
To bowdlerize means to self-righteously remove or modify passages one considers vulgar or objectionable. A medical doctor by the name of Thomas Bowdler, whose birthday was this day in 1754, gave new meaning to expurgation.
Dr. Bowdler gave up his medical practice to practice surgery on the works of William Shakespeare. He removed all those words “...which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family” or which are “...unfit to be read aloud by a gentleman to a company of ladies.” He removed all the words and expressions which he considered to be indecent or impious from Shakespeare’s writings.
 gdixierose