Peter Milward

It was as if in my beginning, in my moment of birth, God said, “Let there be light!” And to my astonishment, there was light. It was the light of the world, the light of my discovery of the Old World. And then, no doubt, like all other babies newly born to the world, I cried. For this fact I have the authority of Lear, who says, “When we are born, we cry that we are come/ To this great stage of fools.” When I was born, I was no doubt aware of people moving around me. At least, I became aware of...

There’s no doubt about it. The life of Jesus is intensely dramatic. I doubt if there has been a more dramatic life in the history of man, whether in the real lives of Alexander and Julius Caesar or in the fictitious ones of Hamlet and King Lear. In the four gospels it has been told with dramatic intensity both in the narrative style of the first three and in the discursive style of the fourth. Shakespeare himself drew deep inspiration from these four sources, as appears in all his plays and...