New evidence:
his signature on the books of the English Catholic seminary in Rome.
Set in the college’s extensive 14th-century crypt, the exhibition conveys the clandestine atmosphere of underground Catholicism, with its spies and priests’ bolt holes. It traces the secret journeys made by Catholics to Rome and by Jesuit priests from Rome to England “to defend their faith despite the risk of being caught, tortured and martyred”.
More scholars are recognizing the probability, too.
In a recent book, a German biographer of Shakespeare, Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, said that she had “come to the conclusion that Shakespeare was a Catholic and that his religion is the key to understanding his life and work.”
