The Greek word hamartia, an archery term meaning "to miss the mark,” is used both in the
Bible, where it is translated by the English word, "sin,” and in Aristotle's Poetics, in which it
designates the "tragic flaw" which, in the Aristotelian theory of tragedy, gives rise to action and
dénouement. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the de Vere Bible annotations display a persistent
concern for the origin and nature of sin. The word "sinne" (often cropped) is written seven times
in the margin of the Bible, more often than any other word, alongside verses detailing some
aspect of sin's nature. Many more verses concerning the subject of sin -- some forty-five in all --
are marked by underlining, most often in the VN style in black ink.
The theme is equally prominent in the writings of Shakespeare. Several Shakespeare
Diagnostics not marked in the de Vere Bible also concern the question of sin, or more specifically
"original sin.” The Genesis narrative of the fall (Gen. 3) and of Cain's crime and exile (Gen. 4.1-
16) are for Shakespeare typological paradigms for tragedy, moments in the human condition
which recur to Shakespearean characters caught up in the vortex of sinful ambition. Claudius,
meditating in the privacy of his cloister, remembers Cain when he confronts the criminal nature
of his deeds:
My offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder!
(3.3.36-38)
As does Bolingbroke, discussing Mowbray's culpability in the murder of Thomas of Woodstock,
Duke of Gloucester, in Richard II:
….He did plot the Duke of Gloucester's death,
….And….like a traitor coward,
Sluic'd out his innocent soul through streams of blood:
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To me for justice and rough chastisement.
(1.1.101-106)
 |