At the Who Wrote Shakespeare? Substack, Julia Cleave wrote an informative and kind review of the North theory, especially focusing on June Schlueter’s and my article in The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) that appeared in December of 2023: “Murder Will Speak: The author of the first Hamlet and the real-life assassination of the Duke of Urbino.” To quote from my Substack post on that TLS article:
Over the past five years, stunning manuscript discoveries linking the war-weary, scholar-knight, Sir Thomas North, to source-plays later adapted by Shakespeare have made news reports around the world. This includes an article in The Observer (The Guardian’s Sunday edition) on Thomas North’s outline for Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, which he had written into the margins of Fabyan’s Chronicles; and a front-page story in The New York Times on a unique, signed manuscript that compliments Thomas North for both “invention and translation,” was kept in the North-family library, and served as an important source for Shakespeare’s plays. Since then, investigative journalist Michael Blanding has written a book about these discoveries, and I too have published my book on “Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Plays.”
Today (12/13/2023), The Times Literary Supplement published our essay, coauthored with June Schlueter, providing evidence that North wrote the first Hamlet: “Murder Will Speak: The Author of the First Hamlet and the Real-Life Assassination of the Duke of Urbino.
In Cleave’s Substack article, she does mention a rebuttal to Schlueter’s and my book on North’s journal by the insightful Ros Barber. As I note in the podcast above, I do love Ros and appreciate her careful scholarship, vivid writing style, and clear thinking. I also recommend her Substack. But as her critique of our work is sincere and serious, it does deserve a sincere and serious reply. So I created a surrebuttal a couple of years ago, which is included in the podcast above.
And remember: stay tuned for a brand new Shakespearean poem—the first one that has been discovered in centuries—that will be revealed here over the next week.
The Debate Over Shakespeare & Thomas North's Handwritten Travel Diary