I was surprised and pleased to see an interview with John Finnis, a leading natural law theorist, emeritus professor of law at University College, Oxford (where I first encountered him in my student days there) and now professor of law at Notre Dame.  The interview was conducted at University of Notre Dame Australia, in Sydney.

What surprised me was that the interview was about Shakespeare, Identity, and Religion. On the question of Shakespeare’s own religion, Finnis concludes “It’s very hard to see how Shakespeare could be other than, at the least, a very, very strong and inward fellow traveller, but I think it’s essentially much more likely to be an actual Catholic, and then when you look at the wider corpus of work by Shakespeare you see, I think, massive evidence that that’s where his heart lies. Many, many of the plays are addressed both to the State Church, members in the audience and to the Catholics in their hearts who are also in the audience and who can hear a kind of under-message in play after play.”

You can download the audio and transcript of the interview at:  http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/shakespeare2c-identity-and-religione28099/4001422