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): 

Never, Iago.  Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love. 

      First Folio, “Tragedies”, p. 326, col.  B, lines 34-39.

There is, however, no trace of any familiarity on Shakespeare’s part with the precious stone lore of the Roman encyclopaedist, either from the Latin text of his great “Historia Naturalis”, or from the translation published by Holland in 1601.  This translator, who Englished many of the chief Latin and Greek authors, Suetonius, Livy, Ammianus Marcellinus, Plutarch’s “Morals” and other works, was pronounced by Fuller, in his “Worthies”, to be “translator general in his age”, adding that “these books alone of his turning into English will make a country gentleman a competent library”.  For his Ammianus Marcellinus the Council of Coventry, his place of residence, paid him L4, and L5 for a translation of Camden’s “Britannia”—­small sums, indeed, for so much labor, but not so unreasonable when we think that a half-century later the immortal Milton got but L5 for his “Paradise Lost”.  He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had studied and graduated; later he studied medicine, receiving a degree of M.D., not from Oxford or Cambridge, however, but either from a Scottish or foreign university.