For years, scholars have been debated what or who inspired William Shakespeare’s writings. Software used to catch cheating students has helped settle this debate. Two writers have discovered an unpublished manuscript they believe the Bard of Avon consulted to write King Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Henry V and seven other plays.
“If it proves to be what they say it is, it is a once-in-a-generation — or several generations — find,” said Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, according to The New York Times.
Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter made the discovery. They describe the findings in a book that is to be published next week by the academic press D. S. Brewer and the British Library. They are not saying Shakespeare plagiarized, but instead that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels. This manuscript was written by George North, a minor figure in Queen Elizabeth’s court and who served as an ambassador to Sweden, in the late 1500s. McCarthy says that the manuscript is “a source he keeps coming back to” and that it “affects the language, it shapes the scenes and it, to a certain extent, really even influences the philosophy of the plays.”
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