Ten Reasons Why Shakespeare Was Catholic

6. Shakespeare condemns the Tudor regime – Hamlet is a play about social disintegration, incest, madness, infertility and murder. These were all things of which the Catholics accused the Tudor regime of Henry VIII and Elizabeth.

7 Shakespeare links social upheaval and chaos with Protestantism – Hamlet and his friend Horatio are “students at Wittenburg”–which was the center of Protestantism and Denmark is portrayed as a newly Protestant regime. The link is clear that it is the Protestant revolution that has brought the curse of murder, fratricide, incest, madness and chaos on the country.

8. Shakespeare may have visited the English College in Rome – In 2009 archivists at the Venerable English College in Rome uncovered two mysterious entries that could have been William Shakespeare using an alias. Because of the secretive and dangerous times, English Catholics abroad often traveled under assumed names. The dates match the time when Shakespeare’s whereabouts were unknown.

9. After his retirement Shakespeare bought a property in London as a priest’s “safe house” – Shakespeare bought the Blackfriar’s Gatehouse at a huge price. One assumes to keep it as a safe house for Catholic priests and for secret masses.

10. Shakespeare was reported to have died as a Catholic – He left almost everything in his will to his Catholic daughter Susanna. He left nothing to his Protestant family members and in the late 1600s, an Anglican minister wrote that Shakespeare “dyed a Papyst” – or a loyal Catholic

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