From The Guardian: Shakespeare was a political rebel who wrote in code, claims author.
A code-breaking book which aims to change the image of William Shakespeare and reveal him as a subversive who embedded dangerous political messages in his work is to be published in Britain.
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.' [continue]
Related links:
The Catholic Bard - Commonweal Magazine
The Shakespeare Plot - The Weekly Standard
Shakespeare, the secret rebel - Macleans
The brightest heaven of invention The Tablet
The religion of Shakespeare - Catholic Encyclopedia
The book:
Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare - amazon.ca
Other Shakespeare stuff at Mirabilis.ca:
Shakespeare's will now on the web
Shakespeare's coined words
Shakespeare's diet
Sleeping with Shakespeare
Much ado about Bard's texts online
What if Shakespeare had used PowerPoint?
Shakespeare's Rose theatre to rise again
Shakespeare Moot Court
Hamlet in Africa, 1607
Shakespeare in the Bush