A code-breaking book which aims to change the image of William Shakespeare and reveal him as a subversive who embedded dangerous political messages in his work is to be published in Britain.

Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith’s new book Shadowplay. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England’s future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it. [...]

As a result the Catholic resistance, which had been going for 70 years by the time Shakespeare was writing, had already developed its own secret code words; a subversive communication system which the playwright developed further in his work. ‘They inevitably had a hidden language, and Shakespeare used it rather like the composer Shostakovich used political codes in the 20th century,’ she said.

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