“[W]hose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold & silent grave from whence no traveller can return …”

2 Nephi 1:14, The Handwritten Book of Mormon (West Valley City, UT: Dan Wees, September 2017), 74. Emphasis Added.

Compare this verse to the writing of William Shakespeare:

“The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

William Shakespeare, Hamlet -Act 3, Scene 1- as quoted in Commentary on the Book of Mormon – Volume 1 (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret New Press, 1955), 237. Emphasis Added. UNVERIFIED.

We now have a much better idea of where Joseph Smith might have found these words. In examining Josiah Priest’s 1825-1826 work The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed we found a story which quotes the words of Shakespeare. In quoting these words, it makes the end of the quotation almost identical to that in the Book of Mormon. “Traveller” is misspelled in both the Original and Printer’s Manuscripts, as well as Priest’s book:

“[F]rom whence no traveller returns.”

The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed (Albany, NY: Josiah Priest, 1826), 531. Emphasis Added.