The pioneer express. [volume] (Pembina, Dakota [N.D.]) 1883-1928, 1885-03-13
shatspe are and the Bible.
Tho Nineteenth Century.

Tho 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 axions 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. 1t 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, isby
no means the only result, nor is it tho
personal and distinguished mark of
Shakspeare's close acquaintance with
the Bible. Many other people have
freely employed Scripture for serious
and didactic ends, from Milton
down to Montgomery. What dis
tinguishes Shakespeare is the perfectly
free and playful and everyday use he
makes of scripture by putting it into
the mouths of oil sorts and conditions
of people on all sorts Of occasions.
Surely thCse kvon ll"ntsnaen of "lewl
and pernicious enormity" in innocent
places, those play-goers who strain at
the gnat Of solitary Scriptural allusion
in modern play, can have no notion
what herds of camels they swallow ev-
cry time they witness play of Shak-
speare's in its integrity. How utterly
subservient Shakespeare deems the treat
ment of religion upon the stage to the
preservation of dramatic truth and re-
atty may be seen in Orchard ILL.,"
where religion and morality become the
fiimsiest child's baubles in the merciless
intellectual grasp Of the tyrant. Ingo,
besides being an authority on the etlica-
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 not understand it, and smells irrev-
erence. Richard III. so far allows his
sense of human injury to get the better
of his sense of religious propriety that
he institutes o comparison in the
matter of treachery between himself and
Christ, and earlier in the play he cries
out upon Bagot, Hushv and Green as
"three Judases, each one thrice worse
than Judasw Poor Bowdler can do moth
ing but hold up his hands in horror and
will certainly excise the passage, and Bis.
hop Wadsworth shall smilingly pat his
approval. No possible testimony to the
efficacy of baptismal grace to be squeez-
ed out of such a line! Away with
it! Shylock has several illusions to
Old Testament personages and facts,
whose use is not very apparent to tho
dim, bcwillered, tendcr-conscienced,
-visioned Bowdler. While What
can family respectability and piety make
of such speech as "Yes, to smell pork ;
to eat of the habitation which your
prophet, the Nazerite, conjured the
devil into?" a speech in which the
heights of dramatic propriety and relig-
ious impropriety are simultaneously
reached at one bound. Bowdlerism can
only sorrowfully shake its poor bewil'
dered head at the dramatist's readiness
to sacrifice every rag of Difference to its
pet prejudices, and, at all costs, to give
the full and exact truth of Shylock's
manner of speech.