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  Date / Time: 10/21/2009 1:43 AM UTC

  King James aka James Stuart and his lover Shakeshpere hand in the bible
  

  Shakespeare was recognized as a gifted artist in his own time. He was favored by the same court that commissioned the Authorized King James Version of the bible. And the peculiar power of this Bible's prosody certainly lends itself to speculation. And then there is Psalm 46.
  King James wanted to honor the birthday of William Shakespeare, or the 46th birthday as most versions have it, so he had it inserted into the 46th Psalm in verses 3 and 9.
  
  

  I first stumbled upon the strange nature of Psalm 46 in Anthony Burgess's autobiography, You've Had Your Time. The argument that Burgess makes, as an aside on composing a musical on the life of Shakespeare, is not meant to be conclusive but is offered as a curio. My attitude to it is the same. Shakespeare and the King James version share a curious synchronicity, which the authors of The Story of English, point to: the bard started wrote his last play at the same time the King James Bible was released.  Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564. The Authorized Version was being revised in 1610, by which time Shakespeare would have been 46. In the King James version of Psalm 46 (see below), counting 46 words down from the top, we find "shake", and counting 46 words up from the bottom, we find "spear". "Selah" doesn't count -- it is sprinkled throughout the Bible as a sort of punctuation mark.
  How else could one account for all of these 46s to work out so well? To top it all off, William Shakespeare is an anagram of “Here was I, like a psalm.”
  
  This kind of word-game is not out of character with someone who delighted in puns and puzzles, and it is also a plausible personal signature, a discrete Easter Egg, possible in a project that was, with good purpose, intended to be as anonymous as possible -- the members of the commission weren't interested in tooting their own horn; they simply wanted to make the Bible accessible.
  

  The King James Bible still stands. Revisions and alternate translations and gross simplifications have flooded the market, but the Authorized Version packs a stranger, more powerful lyrical punch. Shakespeare's hand would not alone account for its durability, but the possibility adds an odd, attractive piece to that particular puzzle: Why is it that this version of the Bible rings deeper and more true than subsequent adaptations? There is no real answer, and the question itself is dubious: Is the King James version really better than the rest?
  
  

  I think so, and so do William Faulkner, George Orwell, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, and a host of other writers -- Anthony Burgess among them. That said, the bard would have been pleased by the speculation and by the discovery of his signature (deliberate or not) in a psalm, all the more so now that people aren't sure that he existed at all.

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