Thomas North
The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Source Plays
We know Shakespeare’s source plays existed. No source scholar or editor denies this. We have records of early versions of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, King Lear, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, etc., long before Shakespeare could have written them. So the question is not whether these older plays existed but, merely, who wrote them? And we now have proof upon proof that the answer is Thomas North.
—Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Plays (50).
Introduction to North and Shakespeare
A brief introduction to the theory that Shakespeare adapted North’s early plyas, including descriptions of the proofs and smoking guns.
North’s Passages in the Shakespeare Canon
No writer has ever borrowed more from an earlier writer than Shakespeare has from North. The playwright has even drawn from North’s unpublished travel journal and handwritten marginal notes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Thomas North never publish his own plays? Did Shakespeare really adapt old plays? Did anyone at the time complain about Shakespeare’s frequent use of old plays? Check out the FAQ for answers to these and other questions.
The Cymbeline Discovery
As described in “The Guardian,” North’s marginal notes that he wrote into a family copy of “Fabyan’s Chronicle” compose the historical outline of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. North’s notes even include a near-quote from the play (with a unique spelling too).
More on North’s Marginal Notes
As he did with Cymbeline, North also used other books he owned as workbooks for other plays, writing important notes in the margins about people, events, or ideas that he would then incorporate in the dramas later adapted by Shakespeare.
Thomas North’s Travel Journal
In 1555, the year Thomas North turned 20 years old, he kept a travel journal of his trip to Rome. Not long after he returned to England, he used these experiences (and entries) to help him craft two of his first plays: Henry VIII and The Winter’s Tale.
Proofs
Proofs of North’s authorship of Shakespeare’s source-plays may be divided into six categories.
- North’s Life in the Canon: As shown in Thomas North: The Original Author of the Shakespeare Canon and Michael Blanding’s In Shakespeare’s Shadow: A Rogue Scholar’s Quest to Reveal the True Source Behind the World’s Greatest Plays, the life and writings of North so persistently dovetail with the works later adapted by William Shakespeare that to follow North’s life in detail is to reconstruct the entire history of the Shakespeare canon, play by play and subplot by subplot.
- North’s Writings in the Canon: While North wrote his plays, he frequently recalled and then recycled many of the stories, images, ideas, speeches, and characters from both his published and unpublished writings. He almost assuredly did this from memory, paraphrasing a passage or scene he had written about before — and in the process he would repeat the same language he used earlier. And many of these recycled passages still remain in Shakespeare’s adaptations. The result is that literally thousands of lines and passages in the Shakespeare canon can be traced back to North’s prose texts (read pdf). These borrowed passages derive from everything North ever wrote and involve nearly every act of every play — not just the Roman tragedies. And many of the links between the passages cannot be disputed as they include identical lines that no one else in the history of English has used — not at the time and not since.
- Thomas North’s 1555 Travel Journal: In Thomas North’s 1555 Travel Journal: From Italy to Shakespeare (link to book is below), June Schlueter and I explore a newly rediscovered journal that the 20-year-old North kept during his trip to Rome and which he then used to help him write early versions of his very first plays, Henry VIII and The Winter’s Tale (1555-1557). In this video and this webpage, I explore some of the connections among these plays, the travel-journal, and North’s Dial of Princes (1557). As we shall see, North also echoed the journal and used these experiences in other plays too.
- Thomas North’s 1591-2 Marginal Notes in his “Dial:” His Workbook for 1590s Plays: In 1591-2, North started underscoring and writing out notes next to certain lines and passages in his recently-purchased, personal copy of a 1582 edition of his Dial of Princes. He then reused and reworked much of this same material into plays he was either revising at the time, e.g., Arden of Feversham and The Taming of the Shrew–or was crafting for the first time, e.g., Macbeth. In other words, North used his own copy of his translation as his own personal research-storehouse and workbook for adding new material. This discovery, perhaps even more significant than his travel-journal, was introduced here for the first time on 3/18/21 and will continue to be detailed here and in more formal publications.
- The Cymbeline Discovery: Sometime between 1600-1604, Thomas North wrote out notes next to the passages in a copy of Fabyan’s Chronicle (1533), which was kept at the North-family library. The notes comprise an outline to Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, Cymbeline, and include all the major plot points and even a unique quote.
- The Contemporary Satires (Coming Soon): From the 1580s to early 1600s, the literary insiders Thomas Nashe, Gabriel Harvey, Henry Chettle, Thomas Lodge, and Ben Jonson frequently spoofed their fellow-writers in their satires. This included making extensive references to Thomas North and his original authorship of the plays adapted by Shakespeare. Their allusions to North were not subtle. As was the standard practice of satirists, they would pun on his name, quote his works, and relate many personal details about him. In the preface to Menaphon, Nashe identified North as “English Seneca,” the original author of Hamlet. In Groatsworth of Wit (1592), Nashe and Chettle included a long history of the North family, explaining precisely how Thomas ended up writing plays for Shakespeare. Ben Jonson also spoofed North on the stage and again described in detail how he wrote Shakespeare’s original plays and even tutored the young dramatist about the theater and the habits of the nobility.
- The Many Smaller Smoking Guns: While the above discoveries — like North’s journal, his marginal notes, the satires, and the many hundreds of North’s passages in Shakespeare’s plays — may be considered large smoking guns, or even smoking cannons, we have also made other important finds–albeit smaller in scope–related to individual plays.
- For example, the playwright of Richard II (first published in 1597) somehow managed to borrow material from North’s personal translations of Nepos’ Lives (1602) five years before North published it.
- Likewise in 1576, George North, a likely cousin of Thomas, wrote an essay on rebellions and rebels while staying at North’s family estates of Kirtling Hall. In the foreword, George compliments Thomas’s writing abilities and dedicates the treatise to Thomas’s older brother Roger, 2nd Lord North. As indicated above, in 2018, June Schlueter and I published a book confirming that this previously unpublished and little-known essay—a handwritten document signed by the author himself and with no known copies—was an important source for the Shakespeare canon. News of this discovery made the front page of The New York Times as well as other major news outlets around the world.
- This list will continue to grow with future posts.
Finally, with many plays, it is the consilience of proofs that ends all reasonable doubt about North’s authorship. For example, the earliest allusions to some particular source-play will indicate its origination in a certain year– and we then find both the experiences of North’s life and the passages of his latest translation from that same year intertwined throughout the play. And this occurs play after play, year after year.
Common Questions
The North discovery certainly prompts many questions. Fortunately, they all have simple answers that may be found in the ever-growing FAQ. But here are a few quick answers to the most common ones:
- Q. Why wouldn’t North publish his own plays? A. Very few plays from North’s era were ever published.
- Q. Why wouldn’t North want money and credit for these plays? A. He did get money and credit for them. But most of his rewards came years earlier when he was writing plays for the Earl of Leicester’s theater troupe or when they were first produced before Queen Elizabeth. (And there is a record of these plays.)
- Q. Why wouldn’t others have mentioned this or have complained Shakespeare was getting too much credit for North’s old plays? A. They did mention and complain about it.
- Q. Why is North’s identity only being discovered now? A. The discovery required 21st century digital technologies, massive and searchable literary databases, accessibility to North’s prior texts, etc.
But perhaps most importantly, these questions are actually all moot. For the truly troubling question people have is: “How can anyone have the audacity to claim that Shakespeare would adapt older plays!?” But as shocking as it may seem, that is not even a point in dispute. We know Shakespeare’s source plays existed; no source-scholar denies this. We know that there were early versions of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, etc. So the question is not whether they existed, but, who wrote them? And we now have proof upon proof that the answer is Thomas North.
North Chronology vs. Shakespeare Chronology
Thomas North was 29 years older than Shakespeare and wrote many of the plays decades before Shakespeare first produced them. This new North-chronology helps explain many mysteries about the formation of the canon.
The North/Shakespeare Videos
See videos explaining why we know North wrote the plays Shakespeare adapted for the stage, including explorations of North’s journal, his marginal notes, and other smoking guns.
