Religious views of William Shakespeare evidence, no general agreement has been reached. Shakespeare and his immediate family were conforming members of the established Church of England. When Shakespeare was young, his father, John Shakespeare, was elected to several municipal offices, serving as an alderman and culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, all of which required being a church member in good standing, and he participated in whitewashing over the Catholic images in the chapel and taking down the rood screen. Shakespeare's birth and that of his siblings were entered into the church register, as were the births of
The Plays of William Shakespeare an authoritative text of Shakespeare. Johnson began reading Shakespeare's plays and poetry when he was a young boy. He would involve himself so closely with the plays that he was once terrified by the Ghost in "Hamlet" and had to "have people about him". Johnson's fascination with Shakespeare continued throughout his life, and Johnson focused his time on Shakespeare's plays while preparing "A Dictionary of the English Language", so it is no wonder that Shakespeare is the most quoted author in it. Johnson came to believe that there was a problem with the collections of Shakespearean plays that were available