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North by Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar's Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard's Work
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About This Book
The true story of a self-taught sleuth's quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the world's most famous plays, taking readers inside the vibrant era of Elizabethan England as well as the contemporary scene of Shakespeare scholars and obsessives. What if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare . . . but someone else wrote him first? Acclaimed author of The Map Thief, Michael Blanding presents the twinning narratives of renegade scholar Dennis McCarthy and Elizabethan courtier Sir Thomas North. Unlike those who believe someone else secretly wrote Shakespeare, McCarthy argues that Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before. In Shakespeare's Shadow alternates between the enigmatic life of North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theater, and academic outsider McCarthy's attempts to air his provocative ideas in the clubby world of Shakespearean scholarship. Through it all, Blanding employs his keen journalistic eye to craft a captivating drama, upending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his "singular genius." Winner of the 2021 International Book Award in Narrative Non-Fiction
Reviews
"a curiously invigorating glimpse of that jobbing, hustling Shakespeare ..."
"McCarthy does not join those who have denied Shakespeare's authorship, typically attributing the Bard's works to Francis Bacon or Edward de Vere."
"The book includes McCarthy's estimated timeline of North's plays next to a timeline of Shakespeare's work, which readers can use along with McCarthy's other techniques to examine passages from both North and Shakespeare themselves."
"An entertaining look at a literary iconoclast."
"Blanding recounts the odyssey of an iconoclast scholar seeking recognition in a world to which he doesn't quite belong."
"Much of the book is taken up with summarizing Elizabethan history to provide context for McCarthy's theories, but Blanding does a good job of capturing the eccentric McCarthy and his passion to get to the bottom of this particular rabbit hole."
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