The local tradition in Stratford is that Shakespeare "died a Papist", having sent for a Catholic priest to give him the last rites.It is clear from his plays that he was against the strictures of Puritanism, but in The Catholicism of Shakespeare's Plays, Professor Peter Milward argues that the whole of Shakespeare's work reveals a common thread of sympathy with the plight of the suffering persecuted Catholics under Queen Elizabeth and King James I.
