For a cultural environment in which the Bible was ubiquitous, reading was not merely a linear or transactional process, a transfer from text to reader. Instead, reading was circulatory, folded and layered. Scripture itself might reach out into a web of cross-references and echoes that were amplified through glosses, marginalia, and other paratexts. These textual relationships were not always complementary, but could generate instances of contradiction, incoherence, or repugnancy. In Act Five of Shakespeare’s Richard II, Richard, imprisoned in Pomfret Castle, engages in “studying” and contemplates a moment that “set[s] the word itself / Against the word.” This speech, and others that follow, reveal the complexities of living out biblical texts that could be the subject of fraught exegetical traditions. Considering Richard’s meditations in the context of contemporary biblical harmonies and glosses opens the complex networks of signification, networks that are particularly resonant in the multi-dimensional setting of the theater.