The Unique Extent of Shakespeare's Borrowings From Sir Thomas North

This video (which I originally posted last December) focuses on Thomas North’s lines and passages in the Shakespeare canon—which is one of the many proofs that North was the original author of plays that Shakespeare would later adapt for the public theater.

For a more detailed summary of the evidence for North’s authorship, check here. That post begins by explaining how scholars already accept that Shakespeare did, indeed, adapt old plays, and it concludes with an examination of various smoking guns that expose North’s authorship. A few of these smoking guns include North’s marginal notes that he used to mark passages he would use in the plays—and one series of marginal writings in one history text that comprise a plot outline for Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.

Also, it was not just North’s writings that we find in the plays, but his life too. In fact, as demonstrated extensively in Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Plays, it is not an exaggeration to say that North lived the plays. I give examples of North’s biography as found in the canon in various Substack articles here:

• Arden of Faversham, Henry VIII, The Winter’s Tale, and Titus Andronicus (here)

• More on The Winter’s Tale (here)

• Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, and Love’s Labour’s Lost (here)

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (here)

• Hamlet (here)

• Macbeth (here)

• 1 Henry VI (here)

Eventually, this list will include all the plays in the canon.

Also, later this year, Schlueter and I will be publishing an academic paper confirming that Ben Jonson, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Lodge all identified North as the original author of Shakespeare’s source-plays—not just Hamlet, but the first Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Timon of Athens, and Julius Caesar. This paper will serve as an important complement to my recent Substack post that explained the important mystery behind Ben Jonson’s Ode to Shakespeare in the First Folio:

Finally, as noted in the last few posts, on Thursday, April 24, 6 PM, I’m going to give a brief and (hopefully) fun talk on “Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Plays” at North Hampton Public Library in NH. I will also be selling and signing books, and answering any questions.