What Was the Religion of Shakespeare?

by M. M. Mangasarian

And be these juggling fiends no more believed,

That palter with lies in a double sense;

and again:

Infected be the air whereon they ride;

And damned all those that trust them!

If it be objected that Shakespeare's hostility to the supernatural is confined to what might be called the bogus variety, and not to the kind that is true, we reply that there is no evidence in the plays that Shakespeare ever made such a distinction. Without anywhere intimating that he believed in one kind of the supernatural and not in another (the kind people believe in is generally their own, and the kind they deny, that of somebody else), Shakespeare expresses his opinion of those who accept the supernatural in no uncertain way:—

Look how the world's poor people are amazed

At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,

Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gaz'd

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies. *