Shadowplay
Via Open Book and Ten Reason an article about a new book called Shadowplay
Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith's new book Shadowplay. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England's future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it.
'It has not been picked up on before because people have not had the complete context,' she explained this weekend. 'I am braced for flak, but we now know we have had the history from that period wrong for a long time because we have seen it through the eyes of the Protestant, Whig ascendancy who, after all, have written the history.'
I had previously heard Professor David Allen White on the Hugh Hewitt show discuss new evidence that Shakespeare's poem "The Phoenix
and Turtle", which had previously defied any key to interpretation, in reality had a very Catholic connection. John Linnis and Michael Wood in a Times Literary Supplement for 18 April 2003 were able to interpret this poem using the key where
the phoenix "is" Ann Line (executed for religion at Tyburn a few months before the standardly accepted date of the commissioning and publication of the volume in which the poem appeared), and the turtledove "is" her husband Roger Line, who had died in exile. This article is not online but one of the authors posted about it here. The National Catholic Register previously reported on this in this article Did William Shakespeare Die a Papist?
Known as 
While I think it is possible Shakespeare may have been Catholic, any talk of "codes" in the plays and poems send up warning signals for me. I've come across too many nutcases who see codes in Shakespeare, spelling out all kinds of things--for example, the author is really DeVere, the author is sleeping with the Queen, the author is the Queen, etc. I guess they're a lot like the people who find secret codes in the Bible or, worse, that "Billie Jean" woman who says Michael Jackson's line in "Billie Jean" saying BJ is not his lover is his coded way of saying that HE is HER lover.
But I do understand that at that time any non-slighting public reference to Catholicism would have had to be made a veiled reference, so I'm willing to give Asquith the benefit of the doubt until I hear more.
Suzanne makes some excellent points. I am reticent to jump aboard the "code" ship. If one finds hints of Catholicism in the work of Shakespeare, that seems well and good. If then one wants to conclude that he was a Catholic, I'm a little skeptical. If then one wants to have him canonized a saint, well... I think it best we just wait "farther along" as my southern friends say.