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
Statue of William Shakespeare, Leicester Square Statue of William Shakespeare, Leicester Square A statue of William Shakespeare, sculpted by Giovanni Fontana after an original by Peter Scheemakers, has formed the centrepiece of Leicester Square Gardens in London since 1874. The marble figure, copied from Scheemakers' 18th-century monument to Shakespeare in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, stands on a pedestal flanked by dolphins at the centre of a fountain. It is the result of improvements to the gardens made by the financier Albert Grant, who bought the Square in 1874 and had it refurbished to a design by James Knowles. The scroll held by Shakespeare is inscribed with