[NotTallTex]

Since when are we to believe anything that Dr. Rowan Williams has to say? The Bard may have been Catholic, but Williams saying so makes me want to think just the opposite.

[Pontiac]

He wasn’t a very nice man in many ways – it’s always very shocking, that. The late Shakespeare was hoarding grain and buying up property in Stratford – it was not terribly attractive.”

Spoken like a true Marxist.

He was investing in real estate and grain futures. He was a (gasp) capitalist!!!

[Jack Hydrazine]

I read a couple of years ago Shakespeare might have been a Sephardic Jewish woman!

[syriacus]

Two noteworthy books on this topic

The Quest for Shakespeare

Shakespeare the Papist

[libstripper]

The English religious situation was highly ambiguous in the time of Elizabeth I. Her father, Henry VIII, made such a mess of it that nobody knew what to profess to stay away from the headsman. Then Edward, Elizabeth's half brother, did his level best to make the country entirely Protestant. He died and his half sister, Mary, aka “Bloody Mary,” tried to turn the country back to full Catholicism. Then Mary died, leaving the country to Elizabeth, Mary's half sister. Elizabeth got to work, combined much of Protestantism and Catholicism into a giant polical-religious compromise, and called it the Church of England. High Church Anglicans could easily possess essentially Catholic beliefs as long as they supported the Church of England and did not express any support for the Pope or Catholic Church. It would have been very easy for Shakespeare to fit essentially Catholic beliefs into the heterogeneous Elizabethan Church of England.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Salvation]

I'm no expert on Shakespeare, but here are other threads about him being Catholic!

William Shakespeare Was Probably a Catholic, Says Archbishop of Canterbury
Shakespeare Did Write Lear; What is More, He Was a Catholic
Was Shakespeare A Secret Catholic? The Evidence Is Mounting…
Shakespeare Scholars Say the Bard was Catholic?

[Cronos]

rowan: He wasn’t a very nice man in many ways – it’s always very shocking, that. The late Shakespeare was hoarding grain and buying up property in Stratford – it was not terribly attractive.”

Firstly, I think the entire premise about Shakespeare being Catholic or Anglican is infinitely debatable with no definite proof one way or the other. Most likely he WAS Catholic, but I don't see it making a difference at all -- he was pretty definitely not a Puritan/Calvinist, but he could have been a High Church Anglican

Secondly, Rowan seems to think Willy-boy was not nice because he practiced capitalism....