Religious views of William Shakespeare the Tyburn gallows, where the members of the underground died, was called 'the place of much trading'. The Jesuit underground used this code so their correspondences looked like innocuous commercial letters, and Asquith believed that Shakespeare also used this code. Asquith's conclusions, however, have met with considerable criticism and evidence of a hidden code has been called "dubious". According to professor Jeffrey Knapp, the work of scholars like Peter Milward, who believe that "the deepest inspiration in Shakespeare's plays is both religious and Christian", has had "little influence on recent Shakespeare scholarship". John Finnis and Patrick Martin have argued more
The Plays of William Shakespeare has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments. The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood. Johnson then introduces Shakespeare: The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an