Evidence unearthed at the Venerable English College in Rome has heightened speculation that Shakespeare may have visited this Catholic seminary, the de facto headquarters of Catholic resistance to the English Reformation, during the 1580s, shortly before he embarked upon his playwrighting career in London, and again in 1613, shortly after his retirement. Several signatures in the College’s visitor’s book contain clues that the Bard of Avon may indeed have travelled to Rome and may have visited the notorioius seminary from which numerous Catholic priests were sent to England to face martyrdom.

The three signatures allegedly belonging to Shakespeare represent a significant and exciting addition to the burgeoning body of evidence illustrating the Bard’s Catholicism. Although this particular evidence is somewhat speculative it offers further intriguing circumstantial evidence to buttress the more solid documentary evidence. As such, it belongs alongside the equally intriguing evidence suggesting that Shakespeare may have been “Shakeshafte” at Hoghton Hall in Lancashire a few years before his apparent or possible visits to Rome. As I state in The Quest for Shakespeare, the evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism is not dependent upon this speculative material but on solid biographical facts, verified by known documentation. Nonetheless, the proliferation of such supporting material strengthens still further the solid case for the “papist” Bard.