Signatures on the three pages of
Shakespeare's will executed March 25, 1616. Original in Somerset House, London.
Signature attached to the deed mortgaging the house in Blackfriars, dated March 11, 1613. In the British Museum.
It should be borne in mind that the great English translation of the Bible, popularly called "King James' Bible", was published only after Shakespeare had completed his last play in 1611. Before that time, dating from Tyndale's version of 1525, and in great measure based on it, a number of English translations had appeared, the most authoritative in Shakspeare's time being perhaps the "Bishops' Bible", printed under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth in 1568, and edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Geneva Bible of 1560, the first entire Bible in English in which the division into chapters and verses was carried out, had, however, the widest dissemination in Shakespeare's time, and a careful study of passages in his works referable to Biblical texts appears to prove that this version was the one with which he was most familiar. His plays testify to his close knowledge of the Scriptures, although no writer is less fettered by purely doctrinal considerations. The Geneva Bible went through no less than sixty editions in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and even after the issue of the "Authorized Version" in 1611 it competed successfully with this for a time.
That Shakespeare may have seen Philemon Holland's (1552-1637) excellent translation of Pliny is nowise unlikely. A notable passage in his Othello seems in any case to indicate that it was suggested by Pliny's words (Bk. II, chap. 97, in Holland's version):
And the sea Pontus evermore floweth and runneth out into Propontic, but the sea never retireth backe againe within Pontus.
Othello replies thus to Iago's conjecture that he may change his mind (Act iii, sc. 3):