Virtual Talk: “North by Shakespeare” with Michael Blanding

The case: Find the true origins of William Shakespeare’s work. The sleuth: contemporary renegade scholar Dennis McCarthy. The suspect: Sir Thomas North, an Elizabethan courtier. Using plagiarism software, McCarthy has found direct links between North’s published and unpublished writings and Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and other Shakespeare’s plays. What’s more, Shakespeare’s plotlines seem lifted straight from North’s colorful life.