Who was the most influential literary writer in our Western
Culture? The mind springs immediately to Shakespeare. But there
was a far more influential writer, who produced only one
surviving book. Heâ€™s an anonymous writer but he wrote the
Gospel of St Mark some fifteen hundred years before Shakespeare
wrote Hamlet. We donâ€™t know who he was but we know that he
wrote his book in the eastern region of the Roman Empire,
probably Antioch, between 70 and 75 CE. Hamlet is performed
thousands of times globally throughout the year and although the
Passion of Christ wasnâ€™t written for performance on the stage
it is also performed globally at Easter, in theatres, village
squares and churches, with musical versions, like oratorios, in
concert venues. The similarities between the final scenes of the
two dramas is striking and although it would be easy to say that
the Hamlet scene is influenced by the Christian story itâ€™s
probably more true to see them both as having been written by
masters of tragic drama, two wri