Shakespeare's Father, His Catholicism, And The Catholic Persecution of Protestants

Wikipedia - John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford: 

John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford (1516 – 3 August 1562) was born to John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford, and Elizabeth Trussell, daughter of Edward Trussell. He was styled Lord Bolebec 1526 to 1540 before he succeeded to his father’s title.

While never of consequence in the Tudor court, the 16th Earl’s support for Queen Mary was instrumental in her accession to the throne in 1553, though he was given no preferment by her. During her reign he was active as the principal magnate in Essex. Under Mary, Essex men and women suspected of heresy against Catholicism were brought before Oxford to be charged, and thence conveyed to the Bishop of London for examination. Of his prisoners, at least sixteen were condemned and burnt, beginning with his former servant, Thomas Hawkes, who was burnt at Coggeshall on 10 June 1555.

Wikipedia - Religious views of William Shakespeare:

In 1611 the historian John Speed asserted Shakespeare’s links with Catholicism, accusing him of satirising in Henry IV the Lollard (or proto-Protestant) martyr John Oldcastle (first portrayed by Shakespeare under his character’s real name, then the alias John Falstaff after complaints from Oldcastle’s descendants) and linking the playwright with the Jesuit Robert Persons, describing them together as “the Papist and his poet”. 

. . .Literary scholar and Jesuit Father Peter Milward and the writer Clare Asquith are among those who have written that Catholic sympathies are detectable in Shakespeare’s works. Asquith believed that Shakespeare uses terms such as “high” when referring to Catholic characters and “low” when referring to Protestants (the terms refer to their altars) and “light” or “fair” to refer to Catholic and “dark” to refer to Protestant, a reference to certain clerical garbs. 

. . .Although Shakespeare commonly adapted existing tales, typically myths or works in another language, Joseph Pearce claims that King John, King Lear and Hamlet were all works that had been done recently and in English with an anti-Catholic bias, and that Shakespeare’s versions appear to be a refutation of the source plays. Pearce believes otherwise he would not have “reinvented the wheel”, revisiting recent English plays.