Post by g***@gmail.comhttp://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168223
This looks to be a major story.
"Independent scholar Dennis McCarthy and LaFayette College professor June
Schlueter used WCopyfind software to compare passages from Shakespeare’s
plays with George North’s 1576 unpublished manuscript, A Brief Discourse of
Rebellion, about the dangers of rebelling against a king. They were able to
trace more than 20 passages back to the essay, including Gloucester’s opening
soliloquy in Richard III, Macbeth’s comparison of dog breeds to different
classes of men, the Fool’s Merlin prophecy in King Lear, and the events
surrounding Jack Cade’s fatal fight with Alexander Iden in Henry VI."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/09/shakespeare-plagiarism-software-george-north
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Another article in the New York times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/books/plagiarism-software-unveils-a-new-source-for-11-of-shakespeares-plays.html
'Shakespeare describes Cade’s final days in “Henry VI, Part 2,” in which he says
he was starving and eating grass, before he was finally caught and dragged
through the street by his heels, his body left to be eaten by crows. Scholars
have long thought that Shakespeare invented these details, but all of them are
present in a passage from North’s “Discourse”'
They didn't mention anything about Marlowe here.
....
'Mr. McCarthy also argues that North’s “Discourse” may have inspired one of
Shakespeare’s most iconic characters, the Fool in “King Lear.” He points to the
memorable passage in which the Fool and Lear are lost in a storm, and the Fool
recites a prophecy that he attributes to Merlin.
Scholars have long puzzled over the recitation, which doesn’t seem to match any known prophecy of Merlin’s. In their book, however, Mr. McCarthy and Ms. Schlueter claim the passage was inspired by a version of Merlin’s prophecy that North includes in his “Discourse” to present a dystopian view of the world “turned up side down.”'