New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1885-03-18
Shakespeare and the Bible.
The Nineteenth Century.

The Nineteenth Century.
Many Of the best known and most fire.
quently quoted passages are parallel
isms or paraphrases Of Scripture NOR
ality or Of some part Of that large body
of moral axioms and worldly wisdom
and justice which belongs alike to the
Bible and to other systems of religion
and philosophy. Instances are so nu-
merous and we'll known that they will
occur to every one. It is generally and
carelessly assumed that these didactic
passages convey the nature and extent
of Shakspeare's relations and obliga-
tions to the Bible. But this is far from
being the fact. His didactic use OF
Scripture history and morality, though
it is the noblest and most valuable, is by
no means the only result nor is it the
personal and distinguished mark OF
close acquaintance with
the Bible. Many other people have
freely employed Scripture for serious
and didactic ends, from Milton
down to Montgomery What dis
itinguishes Shakespeare is the perfectly
free and playful and every day use he
makes of scripture by putting it into
the mouths of all sorts and conditions
of people on all sorts of occasions.
Surely these keen huntsmen of ''lewd
and? pernicious, enormitv" in innocent
places, those play-goers who strain at
the,gnat ola solitary Scriptural allusion
liz ;a :modern play, can have no notion
what. herds of camels they swallow ey-
cry time they witness a play of Shak-
speare's in it's integrity. How utterly
susaservlent Shakespeare deems the treat
ment Of religion upon the stage to the
preservation of dramatic truth and re-
ality may be seen in Richard Ill.,"
whe9e religion and morality become the
fimsiest child:s baubles in the merciless
intellectual grasp of the tyrant. Iago,
besides being an authority on the effica-
cy OF baptismal grace, is ''full of most
blessed condition" in his reference to
Holy Writ, and his constant display of
wise and moral maxims. Poor Bowdler
can Northumberland it, and smells irrev-
erence- Richard II. 80 far allows his
sense ofihumaD injury 80 get the better
OF his sense Of religious propriety that
he institutes e comparison in the
matter OF :hfeachery between himself and
Christ, and earlier in the play he ecries
out upon Ragot, HUSKY and Green as
three Judases ,*esch one thrice worse
shan Judasw Poor Bowdlsr can do nj til.
ing but hold up his handsan horror and
aill certainly ,elcisesthe passage, and Bis.
hop Wadsworth shall smilirgly pat Ills
No possible testimony to the
efficacy of baptisn1al grace to be squeez-
edsout of such a lire! Away WITH
t.! Shylock has several allpsions to
DID Testament personages aad facts,
whose use is not very apparent to the /
linn. bewildered, tender conseienced, !
,arrow-visioned Bewdler. While what
an faaily responsibility and piety M ake
# such E speech as Eyes, to smell pork;
o eat of the hahitatien which your
prophet, the Nazerite, coniured the
levil into?" speech in which the
leights Of dramatic propriety and reIig-
GUS improperly are simultaneously
cached at one bound. Bo,ydlerism car
My sorrowfully shake its poor bewil
erred head at the dramatist's readiness
sacrifice every rag of Difference to it's
let prejudices, and, at all costs, to give
he full and exact truth of Shylock's
manner of speech,
The Rev. Joseph Cook says if Nor.
lonisn1 IS let alone it will control every
tate west of the Mississippi river, ex.
eptino California and Orenon