This paper considers the role of group categorisation, both national and confessional, in early modern discourses of tolerance as they are represented on the Shakespearean stage. Despite the culturally dominant early modern view of England as an essentially Protestant nation, this paper takes as its starting point the observation that Shakespeare's drama frequently imagines alternative political and religious communities: forms of English nationhood that include Catholicism in addition to Protestantism, but also the pre-Reformation notion of the "common corps of Christendom" that is nostalgically involved in his history plays, for instance. Using plays such as King John (c. 1596) or Sir Thomas More (c. 1600) as case studies, this paper aims to investigate to what extent such larger communal identities can serve to buttress the imperative of toleration beyond confessional boundaries. In doing so, it seeks to test the extent to which the empirical disapproval-respect model of toleration may also apply to the history of ideas and cultural practices of early modern England.