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 to Johnson's "Preface to Shakespeare": a discussion of Shakespeare's "greatness" especially in his "portrayal of human nature"; the "faults or weakness" of Shakespeare; Shakespeare's plays in relationship to contemporary poetry and drama; and a history of "Shakespearean criticism and editing down to the mid-1700's" and what his work intends to do. Johnson begins: That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox;