Panel Discussion: Thomas North and Edward de Vere

A lively panel discussion on the recent Michael Blanding book, “North by Shakespeare,” about Dennis McCarthy’s research on Sir Thomas North, and its relevance to Oxford and the Shakespeare authorship question. Moderated by Bob Meyers, featuring as panelists Bryan H. Wildenthal, Michael Blanding, and Dennis McCarthy.

This talk was presented at the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship 2021 Annual Conference on Saturday, October 9, 2021, live over Zoom.

Michael Blanding is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, WIRED, the Boston Globe Magazine, and other publications. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps” (Gotham, 2014), and “North by Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar’s Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard’s Work” (Hachette, 2021), among other books.

Dennis McCarthy is an independent researcher, co-author (with Professor June Schlueter) of “Thomas North’s 1555 Travel Journal: From Italy to Shakespeare” (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021), and author of “Here Be Dragons: How the Study of Animal and Plant Distributions Revolutionized Our Views of Life and Earth” (Oxford University Press, 2009), among other books.

A respected journalist at the San Diego Union and the Washington Post, Bob Meyers served for 19 years as president and chief operating officer of the National Press Foundation. He retired in 2014 with the title of President Emeritus. At the Washington Post, he was part of the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate investigation. He later served as director of the Harvard Journalism Fellowship for Advanced Studies in Public Health. As a freelance writer, his work has appeared in Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Columbia Journalism Review, among others. He is the author of two books, one of which won the American Medical Writers Association Award for Excellence in Biomedical Writing. A member of the SOF Board of Trustees, he edits the popular “How I Became an Oxfordian” essay series on the SOF website. A former member of the Editorial Board of The Oxfordian, he is the new President of the SOF.

Bryan H. Wildenthal, J.D., is Professor of Law Emeritus, Thomas Jefferson School of Law (San Diego), and taught recently as a Visiting Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. An expert on American constitutional history, he is the author of Native American Sovereignty on Trial (a 2003 textbook on law and history) and has published widely in leading law reviews, including a study of constitutional history cited favorably by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 and 2019. An active Oxfordian since 2012, he is the author of the book Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts (2019). He has served the SOF as Trustee, Secretary, First Vice President, and Website Content Editor. In 2020, along with many SOF colleagues, he played a leading role in organizing the Oxfordian Centennial at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., celebrating the original publication of J. Thomas Looney’s groundbreaking book, “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford.

[seanodonovan]

Wonderful! Love the debate format. I would love to see more like this.

Congratulations on the book Denis and Michael. It's a great read and an important addition to the subject. Thank you

More and more I'm thinking that mad Delia (sic) was right all along. Just, she missed North.

[Rameau]

As I comprehend so far, most significant in this debate, Wildenthal hasn't read McCarthy's website and repeatedly dismisses McCarthy's sheer volume of identical linguistic fingerprint in every play - there they are on the screen, page after page, every play and he never indicates full comprehension of the OVERWHELMING preponderance of direct evidence.- McCarthy's slam-dunk! Nor has he read McCarthy's full evidence on North as a playwrite. However, adding to the complexity, Oxford's entire life maps astonishingly, if not conclusively on the plays (Ogburn 1984, Anderson 2005). Can Oxford serve in any way s the middle-man from North to Shakspear/Shakespeare? Oxford needed money too, Shakespeare was at first positioned to make money from them, and then rich himself. The key, perhaps, perhaps not, may lie in researching evidence for North's and Oxford's personal relationship. That I havent seen beyond a couple of guesses.

[samansun]

Let's imagine in four centuries, the name "Penguin Booker" being revered as the greatest writer, whose plumage kept in the Penguinford museum for display.

[martacarson]

Is it possible that Thomas North was a second nom de plume for Edward deVere?

[GreenTeaViewer]

The Stratford man bought plays and reworked them, either by himself (likely the "bad quartos" - the Stratford man was a man of the theatre through and through, but semi-literate) or his hired hands reworked them. It's pretty clear at this point.

[debbieteel]

But, you all believe that Edward DeVere was the Shakespeare who may have "borrowed" for the plays, but not the Shakspere of Stratford. You still don't believe that Shakspere of Stratford could not have written the plays, sonnets at all?