Richard Shakespeare Richard Shakespeare Richard Shakespeare (1490 – before 10 February 1561) was a husbandman of Snitterfield, Warwickshire, north-northeast of Stratford-upon-Avon, the father of John Shakespeare and the grandfather of William Shakespeare. He was most likely born around the Rowington/Wroxall area, about to the north in Warwickshire. He was the son of John Shakespeare (1460–1521), and the grandson of Thomas Shakespeare (1430–1511), his mother was Joan Shakespeare. Sometime before 1529, he removed to Snitterfield, where he was a tenant farmer until his death on land owned by Robert Arden, the father of Mary Arden, who married John, the poet's father. Richard Shakespeare
Religious views of William Shakespeare experimentation with heretical Gnostic theology. However, Eamon Duffy points out that although the majority of Tudor people were muddled and uncertain, accepting of compromise and accommodation, "Religious diversity was not a notion to conjure with in Tudor England… Ritual and doctrinal diversity were evils, aspects of social and religious disunity." Other scholars who have searched for Protestant rhetoric in Shakespeare's writings include Maurice Hunt (Baylor University), E. Beatrice Batson (Wheaton College), and Joseph William Sterrett (Aarhus University), the last of which insists that Shakespeare promoted religious tolerance in his writings. Shakespeare scholars such as Eric Sams and Robert Miola disagree