Our topic is Shake-speare’s Bible. The one he owned. Really. No joke.

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Waugaman’s article, “The Sternhold and  Whole Book of the Psalms is a Major Source for the Works of Shakespeare,” appears in the December 2009 issue of Notes and Queries.

Taking his cue from the marked psalms of the de Vere Geneva Bible, Waugaman set out to investigate two related questions.

First, how important were the Sternhold and Hopkins psalms, in a general sense, for shaping Shakespeare’s religious themes and imagery?  The received wisdom, as Waugaman explains in his article, was “not very.”

While scholars have recognized the generic importance of the psalms, the standard belief has been that while the Coverdale psalms and those found in the Book of Common Prayer were critical to Shakespeare, he was not that familiar with the Sternhold and Hopkins psalms that are found with the 1570 de Vere Geneva Bible.

Not so, found Waugaman, whose Notes and Queries article documents a volley of previously undetected allusions to language that is not found in these alternative sources, but is unique to the Sternhold and Hopkins psalms.

“The Sternhold and Hopkins metrical translation of the Psalms is a crucial but neglected repository of salient source material for the works of Shakespeare….” concludes Waugaman.

“Richmond Noble maintained that Shakespeare quoted the Psalms more often than any other book in the Bible, and that ‘a large proportion of such quotations’ are from the Coverdale translation of the book of Common Prayer. Noble led other scholars to ignore WPB….[but I have found WPB to be a rich source of Shakespeare’s first 126 Sonnets…." (595).

Waugaman’s second, more specific question, was whether the de Vere Bible annotations could provide a heuristic “answer key” that would point him in the direction of passages in the plays that echoed the psalms marked in de Vere's Sternhold and Hopkins.

As originally reported in the de Vere Bible dissertation,  twenty-one psalms are marked in the de Vere Sternhold and Hopkins, mostly with  marginal drawings of a small hand with a pointing finger.  Sixteen  (12, 25, 30, 31, 51, 61, 65, 66, 67, 77, 103, 137, 139, 145, 146 and Lamentations) are marked in the body of the text, and five (8, 11, 15, 23 and 59) in the commentary by Athanasius.

Among Waugaman’s findings, as published in Notes and Queries:

• Sonnet 66 “echoes the sentiments, the imagery, and the language of Psalm 12” (596).
• Sonnet 21 “is structured as a response to psalm 8” (596).
• “…the author  of Psalm 8 is the Muse Shakespeare alludes to in Sonnet 21….The psalmist is an implicit prototype for the rival poet or poets of the sonnets” (597).
• “For my sin” is a phrase that occurs only in Sonnet 83. It occurs as well in Psalm 25:10—also its unique occurrence in that translation….It is thus one of the many instances where Shakespeare’s use of the language of the Psalms implicitly compares his words to the Fair Youth with the psalmist’s words to God…Shakespeare has been accused of a sin he does not agree he has committed…this identical phrase, ‘for my sin,’ would recall to an educated contemporary reader (including the Youth himself) the rest of psalm 25, which therefore constitutes a running subtext for Sonnet 83” (597)
• Psalm 103 has several interesting features that may have especially captured Shakespeare’s imagination….Vendler calls the diction of eight lines of Sonnet 124 ‘imitation biblical.’ It contains many allusions to Psalm 103” (598).
• In early modern England, Psalm 51 was regarded as  the chief ‘Penitential psalm.’…Lady Macbeth’s words are a transparent confession of her crime, so it is fitting that they should allude to the chief psalm of confession…A close reading of this scene against Psalm 51 shows several contrasts between her actions and words, and the psalm, thus highlighting her shortcomings…(600).
• “Psalm 77 is prominently echoed in lines 897-910 of Rape of Lucrece” (602).
• ‘Psalm 146 is also echoed in four significant words in this same stanza [of Lucrece]” (602).

• Psalm 139 captures much of the theme of Rape of Lucrece, including efforts to conceal sin in the darkness of night, and its eventual revelation and punishment…The allusion to Psalm 139, as well as other allusions to the Psalms throughout the poem, suggest ‘secret thoughts’ that scholars have previously overlooked” (602).

When I saw the candle in the “lunatic fringe” theme, I knew it was the theme for me….after all, here we are, dear reader, on the extremest verge of hypothetically rational thought, being assailed by every last pop psychologist in the phone book as nutcases for not accepting the “divine William,” as Herman Melville sardonically termed him, as the godfather of English literature.

I hadn’t quite made the connection to the Portia quote, but the unconscious has a way of leading the willing, like mad Edgar leading his blind father, to the creative fusion that that brings those half-hidden truths to the surface.

Lunacy.

Candle.

De Vere.

A lunatic light broadcasts a soft glow over the landscape of the internet, a beacon in dark times….

Dover cliffs are fearsome steep. Look down at your peril.

You see, Portia’s quote has played a special role for me over the nearly a decade that I have had to reflect on the historical and literary meaning of the de Vere Bible.  It was my serendipitous discovery, sometime in 1992, that two generations of scholars had erroneously traced the origin of Portia’s evidently Biblical phraseology to Mtt. 5.16:

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good workes, and glorify your father which is in heaven.”

But, you see,  it wasn’t Mtt. 5.16 at all.

No, as I transmitted to Professor Naseeb Shaheen, who was then completing his book,  Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Comedies (1993), it was Philippians 2.15:

The words "naughtie....worlde," coupled with the imagery of the shining candle, indubitably connects Portia's phrase to Philippians 2.15, as Professor Shaheen acknowledged.

Shaheen agreed with me.

Its time to stop keeping that a secret.

Please don’t be shy about suggesting changes or additions. A blog is a living entity — it requires readers and critics to breath, grow, and live.

Also now published is the “Critics” section, which includes a selection of quotations from my professional dossier.

To provide a sense of balance and give some indication of the controversial nature of the site’s content, I included David Kathman’s recent rip on me as someone with “pretensions” to scholarship, from the latest issue of The Oxfordian (2009).

Kathman’s quote represents a depressingly typical example of  the echo chamber effect of the Shakespearean establishment, which is remarkably effective at inducing conformity through the use of such ad hominem innuendo.

I will have more to say about the dubious politics by which this astounding statement came to be published in a journal which supposedly represents the views of Oxfordians, but for now I’ll just let readers ponder the Kathman quote, as it were, in situ — alongside  some opinions from others which serve to place Kathman’s pronouncement in a comparative context. For now, I also encourage readers to compare what Kathman says to the documented record of my curriculum vitae.

Added 12/7: Mark Anderson and Roger Stritmatter’s 1996 article on the state of the de Vere Bible research, reprinted from the Shakespeare Oxford Society newsletter, is now available.

Added 12/8: Take the Shakspeare’s Bible quiz!

Added 12/11/08: A reprint of my March 18, 2007  Washington Post article, “Is this the Bard We See Before Us?”

• The new publications page includes a growing list of links to Shakespeare’s Bible materials previously published in academic journals such as Oxford University Press’ Notes and Queries.
• The  Authorship FAQ page covers basic questions and answers on the authorship question.
• The Bible FAQ covers basic questions on the de Vere Bible.
  
• The dissertation page now includes all chapters of the dissertation.
• The curriculum vitae page provides a reasonably current CV of my professional qualifications and associations.

Further updates, are in the works, including:

• Dissertation appendices.
• A “Shakespeare’s Bible” FAQ.
• Some Sample Proofs for the sample proof category.
• A pinch or two of fun with flash.
• The Shakespeare’s Bible quiz.

Stay tuned!