How did Elizabethan England influence Shakespeare and his writing?

One sixteenth-century event that definitely influenced the works of William Shakespeare, and Hamletin particular, was the Protestant Reformation. This was the effort, led by Martin Luther, to reform the Catholic Church - an effort that eventually led to a major break with Catholicism and the establishment of many separate Protestant churches. Lutheranism was one form of Protestantism; Calvinism was another form; and, in England, Anglicanism was yet another form.