by A. Phoenix.
In the last few years the self-taught scholar Dennis McCarthy has received an enormous amount of publicity through his work recently republished in paperback with the dubious title Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Plays which ‘has garnered worldwide attention (including coverage in The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe Magazine, U.S. News, etc).’. The central contention of his celebrated book is that Thomas North (1535-1603), the supposed translator of Plutarch’s Lives, wrote more than thirty plays largely for the Earl of Leicester’s acting company, which were later adapted and reworked by William Shakespeare (i.e., William Shakspere of Stratford) in the 1590s and early 1600s.
