The Bodleian Library was formally opened by the Vice-Chancellor of the University on 8 November 1602. Yet we cannot suppose that in the last thirteen years of his life Shakespeare ever saw the transformation effected by Sir Thomas Bodley in that “great desolate roome” which he had found over the Divinity School. The use of the Library was restricted to graduates of the University. At best we may conjecture that Shakespeare on his visits to Oxford saw the outside of the original library building and may have seen the new quadrangle in course of construction. It was begun in 1610 but not finally completed until 1623.

History

The University Library which Sir Thomas Bodley refounded was naturally enough a library built up by scholars for scholars, and more particularly a library built up by Protestant theological scholars for Protestant theologians. Bodley himself had lectured in Greek to the University before he entered the diplomatic service of Queen Elizabeth. But it is more important that he began his education in Geneva, whither his parents had fled to escape the Marian persecution, and had there studied under Calvin. His diplomatic career had for the most part been spent amongst the congenial and Calvinistic Dutch. Thomas James, Bodley’s choice as the first librarian of his foundation, left behind him, according to Anthony Wood, “this character that 'he was the most industrious and indefatigable writer against the Papists, that had been educated in Oxon since the reformation of religion’”. The Library was therefore primarily intended by the Founder and the Librarian as a Protestant armoury in the paper war against the Counter- Reformation.