Shakespeare's Globe Theatre To Read KJV Bible Over Holy Week

By Jo Siedlecka
Religion News Service

LONDON (RNS/ENInews) William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre will mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible with a cover-to-cover reading between Palm Sunday and Easter Monday.

Twenty actors will take part in the reading, which is scheduled to take 69 hours over eight days. They will recite all 1,189 chapters of the historic Bible in the theater built as a replica of the place that saw many of Shakespeare's greatest plays.

"Four hundred years ago, a set of church scholars sat in Stationer's Hall by St. Paul's Cathedral and put the finishing touches to the King James Bible. Across the river, a set of playwrights, Shakespeare foremost amongst them, entertained a town," artistic director Dominic Dromgoole told ENInews.

"The playwrights listened to the clerics in church, the clerics sneaked in to listen to the plays in the theater. Between the two of them they generated an energy, a fire and wit in the English language."

The theater's 2011 season will also include the story of the creation of the King James Bible in the play "Anne Boleyn," by Howard Brenton. The story looks at the legacy of King Henry VIII's second wife, who conspires with the exiled William Tyndale to make England Protestant forever.

Starting 70 years after her death, the play examines how King James united England's religious factions with a common Bible, and the debt he owed to Anne.

Comments

[Sandbur]

12:09 PM on 04/17/2011

Will the reading be of the 1611 KJV, including the preface by the translators and the Apocrypha, or just the Old and New Testaments?

[Indigo1941]

05:59 PM on 04/16/2011

I would love to hear that.

[BlackYowe]

06:54 PM on 04/04/2011

This is cool, I wish I could visit the Globe and hear a bit.

[PedroLeon]

12:44 PM on 04/06/2011

Same here.

[horseguards]

03:20 PM on 04/06/2011

Black,

Send it to Broadway because we Brits certainly don't want it.

[thomasarthurmaj]

04:18 AM on 04/08/2011

Speak for yourself! I would LOVE to sit in on a bit of that, if I was in the country.

KJV, while not my fave translation, is certainly powerfully lyrical.

[MrSkye]

09:54 PM on 03/31/2011

William Shakespeare had a vocabulary 3 times larger than the KJV, with about 30,000 words to 10,000 for the KJV. The average person has a vocabulary of about 4000 words. Of course, Shakespeare made up some words, but the KJV isn't even close to the command of langauge that Shakespeare had.

[horseguards]

12:14 PM on 04/01/2011

MrSkye,

From where do you get the 30,000 figure?

If the avergage person knows 4,000 words, then 60% of the KJ is beyond average comprehension. Are you saying this is the case?

[MrSkye]

02:49 PM on 04/01/2011

The number comes from word counting all of Shakespeare's writings combined. I wouldn't say the KJV was beyond average comprehension, as many people comprehend words that they don't regularly use, often by context or guessing. Vocabulary are all the words known and USED by an individual.

[horseguards]

08:45 PM on 03/31/2011

Readings of 8 1/2 hours per day, for 5 days. If this is a commercial success, it will be despite the English, not because of them. Who is going to sit through this? The Brits can't even make decent films - they're still obsessed with the "social realism" of the 60's. Ideology versus pragmatism.

[BlackYowe]

06:56 PM on 04/04/2011

They sure have better TV programming and news than we do.

[horseguards]

07:38 AM on 04/05/2011

Black,

I can assure you, we don't. The (BBC) news is always presented in two styles; hand-wringing, woe-is-me victim; too cute, by far. The jounalists are cretins aspiring to celebrity. There is no one in the UK who equals Ratigan, Maddow, Olbermann, O'Donnel (especially), Anderson Cooper, etc. The news is an insult to one's intelligence. We are equal in the worse, but the US is superior in the best. I have no TV.

[future primitive]

11:11 AM on 03/31/2011

Awesome! Actors used to performing in 17th century vernacular reading the written language of the same time period. Two of the most seminal foundations from the dawn of the modern English language. This is a win win.

I hope they have the sense to disc the whole thing up and sell recordings. This would play well, even in the most conservative Christian publishing circles and generate a lot of money for the arts.

[merrymay]

03:53 PM on 04/23/2011

Well said! I agree. A recording would be great, too. Do you remember Alec McGowan speaking St. Mark's Gospel onstage in London and Broadway? Standing room only...I wonder if there is a recording of that?

[TheLibraryOfCodex]

05:17 AM on 03/31/2011

My advice.

Bring a cushion

Those wooden seats hurt.

[Aaron Pozdol]

02:05 AM on 03/31/2011

One thing I'm not clear on is whether this will be a comedy or a tragedy, because it certainly isn't a history.

[BlackYowe]

06:56 PM on 04/04/2011

I can see you don't know history.

[chaapai]

02:02 AM on 03/31/2011

that's to bad! But I guess it's just complete fiction, so it cant hurt anyone.

[Richard Reynolds]

01:06 AM on 03/31/2011

Whether you believe or not, the KJV is an important book in English literature. See it as fiction or dogma. This still seems appropriate.

[ZENNEPHI]

11:33 PM on 03/30/2011

"...Heed Saint Johns' promise, pray and search it through, and the spirit will bear witness
that Holy Scriptures' true..."
Saint Thomas Mormon Institute of Relegion

[4everGG]

09:59 PM on 03/30/2011

How lovely. I'll have to share this story with my 9th grade Honors students. When we began our introduction to Romeo and Juliet, they were quite interested in Shakespeare's life as an actor and playwright.

[ninetailedfox]

09:45 PM on 03/30/2011

. They will recite all 1,189 chapters of the historic Bible in the theater built as a replica of the place that saw many of Shakespeare's greatest plays.

Historic bible is an oxymoron. Its a book of fairy tales. Walk on water? Parting the sea? At least my dragonlance novels arent touted as religious documentation.

[777-Signal]

04:20 AM on 04/02/2011

How about the sermon on the mount?

[ninetailedfox]

09:42 PM on 03/30/2011

Ugh. KJV iusnt literature. Its crap. This sounds like evangelizing.

[pinkibus]

01:46 AM on 03/31/2011

ninetailedfox - the KJV is probably the most beautiful bit of English ever written. No one who studies English literature can avoid learning it as it is so often quoted by great writers. And by the rest of us two though we aren't aware of it..

[syntax facit saltum]

01:53 AM on 03/31/2011

Yes. e.g.,: fight the good fight. The apple of my eye. Eat, drink, and be merry.

[horseguards]

06:38 PM on 03/31/2011

"the most beautiful bit of English ever written"? Your study of English literature must be very narrow and limited. And which great writers have quoted the KJ bible?

16th-17th century writers - poets, dramatists, satirists, polemecists - were more likely to quote a classical writer use classical models and allusions (except Shakespeare with his "little Latin, and less Greek").

[777-Signal]

04:19 AM on 04/02/2011

The word says Mathew 5:44 "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;"

From the KJV

[merrymay]

03:55 PM on 04/23/2011

Now if the Anglicans would only resurrect the old Book of Common Prayer. Some of it is at the top in inspiration and love.