Anti-Mormon critics claim that Joseph Smith received from Shakespeare the idea of referring to death as "the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return." (2 Nephi 1: 14.) Shakespeare's quotation, which critics say is too similar to the statement by Lehi, reads as follows: "But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." (Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1.) Such critics overlook other possibilities for the explanation of the similarity between this statement by Joseph Smith and the one by Shakespeare. In the first place, the idea of referring to death in such a manner is not unique to either of these men. In the book of Job in the Old Testament, we find such statements as: "Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death" (Job 10:21), and "When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return" (Job 16:22). Also, the Roman poet Catulus (who lived in the first century B.C.) included a similar thought in his "Elegy on a Sparrow": "Now having passed the gloomy bourne/From whence he never can return."
Also, Joseph Smith, as the translator of the Nephite record, naturally had to include in his translation those words and expressions with which he was familiar. Therefore, if he had ever heard the grave referred to as a place "from whence no traveler can return" it would be logical for him to translate the similar statement by Lehi in essentially these same words.