>Scholars say the likelihood of George North’s unpublished manuscript A Brief Discourse of Rebellion sharing words and features with the Bard’s plays by chance is ‘less than one in a billion’
>Plagiarism software more commonly used to check student essays for overly assiduous borrowings has uncovered a long-forgotten, handwritten document from 1576 as the possible source for more than 20 monologues and passages from Shakespeare’s plays.
>Independent scholar Dennis McCarthy and LaFayette College professor June Schlueter used WCopyfind software to compare passages from Shakespeare’s plays with George North’s 1576 unpublished manuscript, A Brief Discourse of Rebellion, about the dangers of rebelling against a king. They were able to trace more than 20 passages back to the essay, including Gloucester’s opening soliloquy in Richard III, Macbeth’s comparison of dog breeds to different classes of men, the Fool’s Merlin prophecy in King Lear, and the events surrounding Jack Cade’s fatal fight with Alexander Iden in Henry VI.
>“Until now, no Shakespeare scholar has studied the manuscript, and it has probably remained little read. Yet, as our analysis has revealed, Discourse is not merely the only uniquely existent, evidently uncopied document to have had a substantial impact on the canon; it is one of the most influential Shakespearean source texts in any form,” they write in a new book, A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels by George North, which is published on 16 February by Boydell & Brewer, in collaboration with the British Library. “In terms of the number of plays, scenes and passages affected, the scope of the manuscript’s influence likely exceeds all other known Shakespearean sources, excepting only the Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed and Thomas North’s Plutarch’s Lives.”
Leo Reyes
Maybe he was inspired byt the text? It is not like the plots were in the manuscript.
Kayden Foster
>They were able to trace more than 20 passages back to the essay, including Gloucester’s opening soliloquy in Richard III, Macbeth’s comparison of dog breeds to different classes of men, the Fool’s Merlin prophecy in King Lear, and the events surrounding Jack Cade’s fatal fight with Alexander Iden in Henry VI.
Seems he lifted bits off the text and used them in his plays
Charles Cook
George North was a BLACK man.
Camden Nguyen
Pretty much a non event since what makes shakespeare shakespeare is the poetic quality of his work.
Joshua Price
dosto did this too and no one cares
Alexander Rivera
The description of Cleopatra on her barge in A&C is lifted DIRECTLY from Plutarch's lives, along with mossy of the plot and many other passages. No collaboration, no secret authorship. Just borrowing passages in a tone when that was extremely common. Fake controversy from failed literary critics.
Dylan Torres
>“I’ve only read parts of McCarthy’s book, but I think he has made a good case for Shakespeare having read this work. He tends to overstate his case, and finds significance in tiny details that can be explained by other factors,” said Vickers. >“He has previously shown that Shakespeare knew other works by Sir Thomas North than his famous translation of Plutarch’s Lives. But, instead of taking this as further evidence of Shakespeare’s remarkable memory, in 2011 he published a book, North of Shakespeare, which claimed that North was the true author of Shakespeare’s plays. Scholars are now rather sceptical of his work.”
>UCL English professor John Mullan was also cautious about the significance of the discovery. “This book might well have been read by Shakespeare,” said Mullan. “But there’s an eight-volume hardback work about sources of Shakespeare. And it’s a chastening experience – when you look at a particular play, Henry IV Part I for example, it has nine lengthy chunks from different works. They’re labelled as source, or possible source, or probable source, or historical analogue, or analogue.
Thomas Hughes
it's publicity for a book. move along.
Charles Lee
Making up sensationalist claims about a famous author to sell a book sounds like a pretty smart idea, I should try that: >James Joyce was secretly a pervert with a flatulence fetish and Lewis Carroll was a pedophile.
Jaxson Diaz
>anti plagarism software reveals Joyce's infamous fart letter has much in common with the yet unpublished 'my diary desu'. Joyce scholar notes "in a room full of fart letters, i could pick out Joyce's. They are definitely very similar" >nora house publishing will be releasing the yet unpublished 'my diary desu' later this fall, so be sure to give i a merry little crack if you're a big fan of Joyce.
Jayden Clark
Why do white people always have to steal from pocs?
Asher Cruz
>Independent scholar Harold Bloom and Professor Yank from the University of Dublin used cutting edge plagiarism software to compare the infamous letter to the yet unpublished 'my diary desu', which chronicles the day-to-day life of a NEET in London. They found that many descriptions of Nora's farts were directly transposed from the original text. "the likelihood of there being two Nora's with and arse full of farts is 1 million to 1" said Professor Yank, "This discovery is leading to a radical reinterpretation of the relationship between Joyce and Nora. We are now left questioning whether Nora really was a 'dirty little girl'."
Julian Walker
...
Luis Rodriguez
Why are people so obsessed with whether Shakespeare in particular wrote all his plays/was entirely original? you rarely see this with any other author.
Luis Fisher
gotta dethrone the king
Jordan Scott
It reminds me of what happened to Bach: The posthumous influence is so strong that people retroactively project an innovative visionary character on to the historical figure and it comes across as contrarian/edgy to poke holes in the popular mythology.
Josiah Rogers
>creative research gives us new information about shakespeare’s method and sources of inspiration >does of course not detract from him as a writer >nobody claims it does >hurrdurr poetic is only relevant so research is a non event K
Jaxson Parker
Shakespeare dindu nuffin
Andrew Hernandez
I suspect you need to have a friend who works as a journalist at a major newspaper first.
Leo Hall
Plutarch's lives was one of the only sources on ancient history for people like billy so it's no wonder he used it heavily
