
A new book is once again raising questions as to the source of 11 Shakespeare plays.
BEACON TRANSCRIPT – George North was a nobleman at Queen Elizabeth I’s court in the late 1500s. His ambitions drove him, among others, to write a manuscript that would never see the light of day. This was about the frequent rebellions against the monarchy. It might have also been the source of inspiration for several Shakespeare plays.
The name North gave to his work was A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels, and it has been lying abandoned on a dusty shelf in The British Library since 1933. However, according to recent reports, a recent book might shock everyone as it comes with a new theory. According to this, William Shakespeare himself drew inspiration from that old manuscript.
Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter are the authors of this book which connects North’s obscure work to 11 of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. Macbeth, King Lear, and Richard III are among them.
The authors reportedly used a software called WCopyfind, which teachers usually use when they want to catch dishonest students.
Now, it’s important to acknowledge the fact that the authors are not saying that Shakespeare copied this manuscript. However, they point out that he surely drew some inspiration from its style and topics.
Are 11 Shakespeare Plays Indeed Inspired by an Obscure Manuscript?
Dennis McCarthy is the lead of this rather unusual research project. It all began back in 2006 when he became interested in finding out the source of inspiration for some of the most famous Shakespeare plays.
McCarthy reportedly couldn’t believe his eyes when he stumbled upon a 1927 auction catalog. This suggested that people should compare North’s Discourse to Shakespeare’s works.
After asking June Schlueter to help him, the pair tracked back the manuscript and found it in The British Library. Upon analyzing it with the plagiarism software, McCarthy and Schlueter detected some very rare words that were used in the works of both authors.
It seems that the most compelling proof of a possible plagiarism lays in the description of Jack Cade. In 1450, he led a failed rebellion against Henry VI. In the play Henry VI, Shakespeare describes the king’s death in great detail. At the same time, North used a similar description for Cade in his manuscript, along with the descriptions of two other rebels.
For years, famous figures like Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain, as well as specialists argued that William Shakespeare was nothing else but a name on the cover of a book.
The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, “group theories” and Christopher Marlowe being the real author are just some of the most famous alternative candidates.
As it is, the authenticity of the Bard’s world-famous works might never be proven.
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Does McCarthy really think that Is it pure coincidence or even possible that 2 highly educated writers and translators (Thomas and George) with an identical surname (North) both – in the 15-seventies- inspired Shakespeare in such an impressive way that the bard plagiarized from their topics and style.
The theory starts to make sense (for me!) only , if you assume, that the “true” Shakespeare was a child prodigy of unimaginable proportions (so far I can only recognize Christopher Marlowe) who at the age between 8 and 11 already accompanied as a page Phillip Sidney on a 3 year trip (1572-1575) through the mainland of Europe, with a stay of 10 month in Italy in 1574. From the very beginning of the bards creative literary career the true literary poet/dramatist genius had to write, (and wrote) under changing pen-/pseudo-/alias- names and initials ( such as George/Thomas North?? and later Drayton /Shakespeare and so many others etc )
Consider that a child prodigy of similar dimension (Mozart) composed his first piano concert at the age of 11., his first piano trio at the age of 5.
Marlowe intellectually must have been so far ahead of his time that (i suppose) he did not attend for a longer period the Kings school in Canterbury after his return to England in 1576 . There are some hints that prior to his study at corpus Christi College Cambridge , from 1580) he spent some time undercover at Oxford University .
I am aware, that such a thesis cannot be accepted today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7VeQ7OER14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWAtL2D2e1s&t=1s