The “Chandos portrait” of Shakespeare Last night I taught our first class in a course entitled “The Bible as Literature” in Wash U’s University College . So don’t be surprised if there’s a few posts here over the next weeks with that title before the colon. One of my basic theses for the course is that perhaps the most foundational event in the history of English-speaking literature was the translation of the Bible into the Authorized Version, otherwise known as the “King James.” Shakespeare is a very close second. To illustrate my point, we played a famous little game with the King James version of Psalm 46