Religious views of William Shakespeare his time in his sensitivity to the Islamic world and its inhabitants." According to the conclusion of Prof Matthew Dimmock, Shakespeare's depiction of Islam and Muslims "denied either scriptural congruence or religious coherence, embodied in the martially aggressive male." Shakespeare's works included several Muslim characters, including Aaron the Moor in "Titus Andronicus", the Prince of Morocco in "The Merchant of Venice" and Othello in the eponymous play. These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England around 1600, such as that of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud. Shakespeare also makes one explicit reference
Religious views of William Shakespeare Elizabeth's chief councillor Lord Burghley, and the 1584 "Doctrine of Equivocation" by the Spanish prelate Martin Azpilcueta that was disseminated across Europe and into England in the 1590s. Perhaps Shakespeare's most direct reference in the plays to contemporary religious issues comes at the birth of Queen Elizabeth in "Henry VIII", during whose reign, as the character Archbishop Cranmer, architect of the reformation, predicts: "God shall be truly known". The words in question, however, are generally attributed to Fletcher, and not directly attributable to Shakespeare. One perspective is that to deduce from the evidence a definite Anglican Shakespeare is to misapprehend