Abstract
Abstract Craig Pearce’s TNT series Will (2017) incorporates many of the same historical facts used by biographers to argue that Shakespeare was a Catholic, but he employs them to criticize the excesses of fundamentalist religions, past and present. Pearce depicts the Jesuit priest Southwell as both an ardent defender of his faith and an ambitious zealot who is indifferent to the suffering of his supporters, who are tortured and executed as a result of their connection to him. Concurrently, Pearce portrays Richard Topcliffe, Queen Elizabeth’s torturer, as a Puritan who enjoys sadistically tormenting recusant Catholics on behalf of England’s Protestant government. Pearce links these characterizations to contemporary religious fundamentalists, specifically supporters of enhanced interrogations among the Religious Right and Muslim extremists who perform public executions. The religious partisanism that Pearce condemns in Will should also be avoided in biographical studies of Shakespeare.
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