This first week discusses seven passages from Shakespeare’s darkest plays that derive from North’s earlier writings.
Romeo and Juliet
In 1562, Arthur Brooke referred to an early stage tragedy on Romeo and Juliet in the preface to a long epic poem on the star-crossed lovers. As explained in the posts below, the connections between Brook, North, and Romeo and Juliet all indicate the same thing: Brooke used the tragedy as one his sources, and…
7. Coriolanus’s Belly-Fable Conflates 3 Fables, All Written by North
In an earlier example, we noted that the playwright of Julius Caesar was able to recall passages from North’s Dial while copying passages from North’s Plutarch. In this example, he intertwines stories from three of North’s translations. As is well known, in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Menenius’s fable, in which “all the body’s members / Rebelled against…
6. Arden’s Speech on the Fear of God and Speech of Men
In North’s Dial of Princes, Marcus Aurelius complains that in most instances, religious teachings and concern for reputation are often enough to keep women virtuous. But, he says, “if the fear of the Gods, the infamy of the person, and the speech of men do not restrain the woman, all the chastisements of the world…
5. North’s “Dial” and Caesar’s Speech on Death and Cowards
As is well known, Caesar’s speech that “Cowards die many times before their deaths” was hinted at in North’s Plutarch’s Lives. But previously, it was believed that Shakespeare took that hint and then refashioned it himself with many new details. Yet, as we see both above and below, the specific words and notions of the…
4. Romeo’s Sorrow
In North’s own copy of his translation of the 1582 edition of The Dial of Princes, the translator adds a marginal note highlighting the “description of sorrow (Fol. 296 in 1582 edition; 475 in 1619 ed.) The passage describes how people act when they are depressed: they crave solitude, hate the day, love the night,…
3. The Miseries of Hecuba and Hamlet’s Play to Catch The Conscience of a King
After Hamlet watches an actor perform a tragic description of Hecuba’s agonies caused by the “tyrant Pyrrhus,” he expresses astonishment at the actor’s abilities to fake such deep sorrow: “For Hecuba! / What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?” (2.2.558-60). In this same speech, the Prince then…
2. Lear’s Poor Naked Wretches Who Must Borrow Clothing From Beasts
In one chapter in The Dial that deals with poverty, North writes that “the author … compareth the misery of men with the liberty of beasts.” The point was that, in contrast to human beings, animals possess a number of natural gifts that help them survive: “to birds she [Nature] hath given wings … to…
1. Iago’s Speech on He Who Robs Me of My Good Name
Thomas North would publish his first translation, The Dial of Princes, in 1557, seven years before Shakespeare was born. And we do not even complete its first page before we come across something that sounds suspiciously Shakespearean — specifically, a passage that reads much like Iago’s speech on the thief of reputation in Othello. North’s…