Religious views of William Shakespeare

The religious views of William Shakespeare are the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate dating back more than 150 years. The direct evidence of William Shakespeare's religious affiliation indicates that he was a conforming member of the established Anglican Church. However, many scholars have speculated about his personal religious beliefs, based on analysis of the historical record and of his published work, with claims that Shakespeare's family may have had Catholic sympathies and that he himself was a secret Catholic. Other scholars have speculated that he was an atheist. Due to the paucity of direct evidence, no general agreement has been reached.

No matter what Shakespeare's personal religious beliefs might have been, at least outwardly he and his immediate family were conforming members of the established Church of England. When Shakespeare was young his father, John Shakespeare, was elected to several municipal offices, serving as an alderman and culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, all of which required being a church member in good standing, and he participated in whitewashing over the Catholic images in the chapel and taking down the rood screen. Shakespeare's birth and that of his siblings were entered into the church register, as were the births of his three children and the burials of his family members. His brother Edmund, who followed him to London as an actor and died there, was buried in St Saviour's in Southwark "with a forenoone knell of the great bell", most likely paid for by the poet. As leaser of the parish tithes, he was a lay rector of the church. He and his wife were buried in the church chancel, and a monument that included a half-figure bust of the poet was set into the north wall of the chancel. The matter is complicated by the fact that Shakespeare failed twice to pay his taxes for St Helen's parish, where he is listed by name, and he is not among those “in any of the annual lists of residents of the Clink parish (St Saviour’s) compiled by the officers who made the rounds to collect tokens purchased by churchgoers for Easter Communion, which was compulsory.”

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