North by Shakespeare
A Rogue Scholar's Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard's Work
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Narrated by:
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Will Collyer
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By:
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Michael Blanding
About this listen
From the acclaimed author of The Map Thief comes the true story of a self-taught Shakespeare sleuth's quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the English language's most famous plays.
A work of gripping nonfiction, North by Shakespeare presents the twinning narratives of rogue scholar Dennis McCarthy, called "the Steve Jobs of the Shakespeare community", and Sir Thomas North, an Elizabethan courtier whom McCarthy believes to be the undiscovered source for Shakespeare's plays.
For the last 15 years, Dennis McCarthy has obsessively pursued the true source of Shakespeare's works, with fascinating results. Using plagiarism software, he has found direct links between Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and other plays and Thomas North's published and unpublished writings - as well as Shakespearean plotlines seemingly lifted straight from North's colorful life.
McCarthy's wholly original conclusion is this: Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before - many of them penned on behalf of North's patron Robert Dudley, in his efforts to woo Queen Elizabeth. That bold theory answers many lingering questions about the Bard with compelling new evidence, including a newly unearthed journal of North's travels through France and Italy, filled with locations and details appearing in Shakespeare's plays.
North by Shakespeare alternates between the dramatic life of Thomas North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theatre, and academic outsider Dennis 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 highly readable drama, up-ending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his "singular genius".
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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- True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors
- By: Debra Brown, M.M. Bennetts
- Narrated by: Ruth Golding
- Length: 25 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A compilation of essays from the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, this book provides a wealth of historical information from Roman Britain to early 20th-century England. Over 50 different authors share hundreds of real life stories and tantalizing tidbits discovered while doing research for their own historical novels.
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Historical Tidbits
- By Troy on 08-03-15
By: Debra Brown, and others
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The Man Who Invented Fiction
- How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.
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Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read
- By LCorSMT on 06-21-23
By: William Egginton
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Dying Every Day
- Seneca at the Court of Nero
- By: James S. Romm
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman.
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Outstanding
- By michael bobadilla on 05-04-23
By: James S. Romm
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Shakespeare and the Resistance
- By: Clare Asquith
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1590s were bleak years for England. The queen was old, the succession unclear, and the treasury empty after decades of war. Amid the rising tension, William Shakespeare published a pair of poems dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece a year later. Although wildly popular during Shakespeare's lifetime, to modern readers both works are almost impenetrable. But in her enthralling new book, the Shakespearean scholar Clare Asquith reveals their hidden contents.
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Excellent scholarship unveiling hidden history
- By Lumen Fidei on 07-03-23
By: Clare Asquith
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Heroes
- From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this enlightening and entertaining work, Johnson presents heroism through examples in history. From Alexander to Joan of Arc and George Washington to Marilyn Monroe, here are men and women from every age and corner of the world who have inspired and transformed their cultures and the world itself.
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Interesting, but deeply flawed
- By Kennet on 12-27-07
By: Paul Johnson
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The Bookseller of Florence
- The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.
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Great book, Horrible narrator
- By Sergio Remon on 07-01-21
By: Ross King
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Natasha's Dance
- A Cultural History of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 29 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
- By Tarquin on 02-13-19
By: Orlando Figes
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God’s Secretaries
- The Making of the King James Bible
- By: Adam Nicolson
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment “Englishness” and the English language had come into its first passionate maturity. Boisterous, elegant, subtle, majestic, finely nuanced, sonorous, and musical, the English of Jacobean England has a more encompassing idea of its own reach and scope than any before or since. It is a form of the language that drips with potency and sensitivity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book.
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Not what I was expecting
- By Greg on 12-29-13
By: Adam Nicolson
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Origins of The Wheel of Time
- The Legends and Mythologies That Inspired Robert Jordan
- By: Michael Livingston, Harriet McDougal - contributor, Robert Jordan
- Narrated by: Harriet McDougal, Kate Reading, Michael Kramer, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Take a deep dive into the real-world history and mythology that inspired the world of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time®. This companion to the internationally bestselling series will delve into the creation of Jordan’s masterpiece, drawing from interviews and an unprecedented examination of his unpublished notes. Michael Livingston tells the behind-the-scenes story of who Jordan was, how he worked, and why he holds such an important place in modern literature. Origins of The Wheel of Time will provide exciting knowledge and insights to both new and longtime fans.
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Agenda driven ideological bend.
- By Maxwell on 06-19-23
By: Michael Livingston, and others
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King Richard III
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Kenneth Branagh, Geraldine McEwan, Nicholas Farrell, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Written in 1593, King Richard III is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. This play differs from its predecessors, being amore structured piece, examining the development and motivations of a single character, Richard Duke of Gloucester, who will stop at nothing to gain control of the throne occupied by his brother Edward IV.
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Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end
- By Darwin8u on 03-16-17
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Anne Boleyn
- 500 Years of Lies
- By: Hayley Nolan
- Narrated by: Hayley Nolan
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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History has lied. Anne Boleyn has been sold to us as a dark figure, a scheming seductress who bewitched Henry VIII into divorcing his queen and his church in an unprecedented display of passion. Quite the tragic love story, right? Wrong. In this electrifying exposé, Hayley Nolan explores for the first time the full, uncensored evidence of Anne Boleyn’s life and relationship with Henry VIII, revealing the shocking suppression of a powerful woman.
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Very annoying narrator!
- By momo chan on 12-02-19
By: Hayley Nolan
What listeners say about North by Shakespeare
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- Richard McKown
- 04-04-22
This is a great story about collaboration
If you take nothing else away from this book it opens up the possibility for collaboration. If you think about the Renaissance idea of the lonely genius creating masterpiece after masterpiece and contrast that with the reality of staging an actual theater production, where actors might make suggestions for possible edits to the dialogue, It’s not difficult to imagine that there could have been other collaborators. And that William Shakespeare, not unlike Lin-Manuel Miranda just happened to be brilliant at putting everything into memorable poetry with an emphasis on the psychology of his characters. I don’t think this book takes anything away from Shakespeare, but rather it might be a roadmap for the creation of new masterpieces in our time.
I would read this book in the spirit of Elizabeth Gilbert‘s “Big Magic”
enjoy
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- Online Shopper
- 04-16-22
Pretty good
I have a hard time understanding shakespere. The old english is tough for me to process and I’ve only studied a couple plays in school. So not a huge fan. So interesting to hear a story about Shakespeare’s story. It seems to be a compelling argument of North’s strong influence (at a minimum) on Shakespeare’s (?) plays. A good story but for someone who doesn’t know the plays there was too much minutia for my likings. I suspect fans of the plays or Tudor England would get more from it. I enjoyed learning about Elizabethan England and that period of history with the intrigue. Good not great for my taste. A nice perspective and view on the plays and the times. I’m more interested to read the plays now.
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- Kate R
- 10-03-22
A bit of a rollercoaster… Some good, some bad
As context, I have a master’s degree in Medieval & Renaissance Studies, so I was definitely interested in this book when it came up as a suggestion for me.
I think the problem of the book is that it takes 6 hours to get to the point that should have been made right at the beginning: plagiarism, collaboration, and borrowing from other works was RIFE in the Renaissance. In fact, the whole Renaissance was spawned by reviving classical (Greek, Roman) works. It then takes 2 hours after that for him to admit that his ideas are, in fact, not new, and it’s reasonably agreed upon that Shakespeare did use North as a source (though McCarthy argues that literally everything Shakespeare wrote came from North, while most scholars are more in the camps of “some” influence).
Essentially, I don’t find this book to be particularly groundbreaking in the way I think others might. I think he makes strong points regarding the works of Thomas North and that there really might be something to it. Shakespeare almost certainly drew from other sources. However, there’s a thin line that’s walked better in some places than others about dismissing Shakespeare’s influence on the works. In some places in the book, it feels like McCarthy doesn’t give credit where credit is due. But that’s just my opinion.
I think the usage of EEBO and plagiarism software is a great idea. I did take issue with McCarthy - not trained in Elizabethan language - “translating” North’s work to put it into the software. The tricky bit is that English wasn’t standardized at that point, and adapting modern English spelling to run it through plagiarism software does 2 things: it may change the meaning of some words if not completed by someone properly trained in the ins and outs of 16th century English (which would potentially fix any bias), and it also adds a barrier between determining true plagiarism. For example, we know that current English translations of the Bible can be extremely different from the original Greek. I think it would be fascinating to create a plagiarism software that accounts for different spellings of words and running it through that - it would seem that would be a much more accurate investigation.
All of that being said, I will also say that academia has a tendency to outright bully people with different thoughts. I would genuinely like to hear the rebuttal of a Shakespearean scholar rather than just the countless examples of them rebuffing McCarthy. Is McCarthy’s method unproven? Mostly. Is it something that can be tested in a way to make it proven? Absolutely. If I were in academia, I would think it would behoove me to have this be a project to undertake. It could potentially open up a lot of avenues.
At the end, McCarthy seems to make the outlandish claim that a half a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays published after his death were actually the original North plays that Shakespeare had laying around and his buddies mistook them for ones he wrote. Putting that in with 25 minutes to go really made me feel like I had wasted my time. McCarthy keeps insisting that this isn’t a conspiracy, but something tells me he’s holding back some of the even crazier ideas he has….
All in all, I think this is a good start - but again, needs some revision. Thomas North was not Shakespeare, though the two men certainly knew of each other and Shakespeare likely drew material from North’s works.
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- Smurf
- 04-08-22
Fascinating read (listen)
Great book. Lots of things to think about. The story and information was well laid out. Kept me interested the whole time.
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- Derek Hunter
- 10-29-21
An exciting investigative adventure
Speaking as someone who has been passionate about the plays and poems of Shakespeare since my teens (30 years), and about as long equally engaged in the Shakespeare Authorship Question, this is truly a spellbinding book. I've read many books, essays, articles, watched many videos, documentaries, presentations, lectures on the SAQ, and changed my position on the various candidates over the decades, seeing the Stratfordian, Oxfordian, Marlovian cases, and others such as Neville's, Stanley's, and others, as having many good, persuasive arguments. There have been many brilliant people arguing for these candidates, Ros Barber and Peter Farey for Marlowe, Roger Stritmatter and Mark Anderson for Oxford, Brenda James and William Rubenstein for Henry Neville, Stephen Greenblatt and Anthony Burgess for the man from Stratford, John Raithel and James Greenstreet for William Stanley, and more. And yet, despite all of their arguments, it is hard to deny the strong possibility that what Dennis McCarthy has done with the brilliant help of his two collaborators, Michael Blanding (the author of this book) and June Schlueter (co-author of North's 1555 Travel Journal), just might have put forth a greater and more convincing argument than any previous Biographer of the Bard. In addition for the case that McCarthy makes for North's contribution, Blanding's writing in North by Shakespeare is absolutely spellbinding. Following two narratives that parallel each other - 1) McCarthy's journey to prove North's contribution to The Canon, including a very engaging narrative of their physical journey through Europe with McCarthy's daughter following with her documentary crew (a forthcoming doc that I am definitely looking forward to seeing), and 2) North's life and times. Blanding brilliantly goes back and forth between the two adventures of North's life in 16th century England and mainland Europe to McCarthy's journey of the last 15 years, the two narratives balancing and adding significance to each other in extremely engaging ways. As someone who has been open to changing my position when looking at new evidence and new arguments (unlike many in the debate, both Stratfordians and Anti-Stratfordians alike) and yet also continuing my deep enthusiasm in the SAQ, reading this book and listening to this Audible narration of it, I absolutely had a difficult time staying away from either, and have come away feeling that North was the true author of the Shakespeare Canon. Read the book or listen to this Audible production to find out why, along with checking out McCarthy's site on North and read the book by McCarthy and Schlueter about the 1555 Travel Journal by North. Take a look for yourself for North's case, the case for Marlowe, the case for Oxford, the case for Neville, the case for Stanley, the case for the Stratford man or anyone else, and come to your own conclusions. What is undeniable is that North has now become just as strong a candidate as any of them, if not more so. For I, after serious consideration, feel strongly that North (and unlike McCarthy, North alone, without the help of the Stratford man) was The True Bard. Enjoy and explore!
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- Stephanie M
- 07-06-22
Giving Context to Shakespeare's Work
This analysis of Thomas North's writings & the connections to Shakespeare's plays was intriguing. Equally interesting was the shifting back & forth to histiorical events & happenings in the court of Queen Elizabeth. Having done archival research for an historical documentary, I experienced the joy of the treasure hunt along with the author & McCarthy as potential pieces in the puzzle were found & new data was triangulation. Cudos for their persistence & gratitude for widening understanding of Shakespeare's sources & the times in which he & Thomas North lived $ created.
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- Aleta Chamberlain
- 01-31-22
Awesome
Made a believer out of me. Good history lesson as well. Interesting fellow. Like to hear about other projects. Expresses my feelings about entrenched academics, scientists and ideas. Knowledge is littered with amateurs and outsiders making incredible discoveries because the are not
encumbered by orthodoxy.
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- Dagny1558
- 02-01-22
Just ok
I don't review often, but I think it important for this book because it isn't what I thought it would be. It follows a researcher with a novel view of who wrote Shakespeare's plays. It's not just the argument - it's like a documentary of the researcher's life and quest to legitimise his theory to the wider community.
Nothing wrong with that, but I find it distracting to the actual meat of the book.
It's very interesting, but I *am* slogging along to get through it. I wish there was a way to fast forward around all the bits about the gent's theory being repeatedly rejected by the establishment. I care about the theory itself and am only continuing through because *that* interests me...and for the moment I'm still deciding what I'm going to read after this. If a compelling crosses my desk in the meantime, though, I'll not finish this one.
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- CL
- 10-09-23
Yikes
This book was hard to get through. The tone of the book - and the main subject, McCarthy - are so condescending that it makes you choke, especially because McCarthy and Blanding both make it clear that before this, they didn’t know or care about the plays attributed to Shakespeare. This lack of knowledge leads to all kinds of amateurish assumptions. Anyone who has interest in Shakespeare knows that he didn’t make up his stories wholesale, that they were pretty much ALL adaptations of existing stories, as often happens on Broadway today. (Think of all the films that have been turned into plays.) But McCarthy and the author keep “discovering” this breathlessly. It would be like reading a book written about Walt Disney, where the gotcha is that he didn’t invent the story of Cinderella, or where they say the musical Wicked is a fraud because it was based on the Wizard of Oz. It’s just silly. What this book fails to appreciate, again and again, is that theatrical genius isn’t about clever turns of phrase. On stage, the genius is much more about HOW all those words come together. McCarthy at one point claims that North wrote all the “masterpieces” and Shakespeare “just adapted them.” This is insulting. Adapting existing material for the stage isn’t an easy task, or every hit film would instantly become a hit musical without effort. But this is obviously not so.
McCarthy seems determined to prove that North is the real author as a way to make himself feel big. At one point, he despairs that a movie is coming out about Shakespeare maybe not writing his plays, and he freaks out and self-publishes five years of work without editing it because he doesn’t want to “lose.” This is the attitude throughout. He has a deep need for everyone else to be wrong but him, rather than a genuine search for the truth. He clings to cherry-picking - at one point he says Shakespeare’s plays have too much accurate knowledge of Italy - they must have been written by someone who went there, not Shakespeare! But then when there’s a geographic mistake about Italy - we’ll that MISTAKE now proves that Shakespeare didn’t write it. …what?? Similar double-standards, a lack of perspective, and a TOTAL lack of Occam’s razor abound. This book doesn’t know what it doesn’t know!
The narrator mispronounces basic words like “theologian.”
I give it two stars because they did give some enjoyable summaries of what it was like to be a nobleman during the Elizabethan era and it also explains the dissolution of the monasteries very clearly.
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- W R
- 03-07-22
Ridiculous
This is one of the most asinine books I have ever read.
The author presents no evidence for McCarthy’s belief that North wrote plays or, even if he did write them, that Shakespeare was familiar with them.
The argument, if you can call it that, is based on supposition, wishful thinking, and the cherry picking of random phrases in North’s writings. The only thing that comes close to a serious analysis involves the use of plagiarism software, but the technology is unproven and the results presented here are useless because there are no plays by North to compare to the plays attributed to Shakespeare. McCarthy relies on the writings by North that Shakespeare is known to have read, and then McCarthy makes up imaginary plays.
McCarthy accuses academics of refusing to consider certain ideas because those ideas challenge the status quo. The truth is that academics, like sensible people generally, care about whether or not what they believe is true. Knowledge advances through the use of sound logic, rigorous methodology, and the accumulation of substantiated evidence. It does not advance because some “rogue scholar” has a fanciful hunch, because even if the hunch is correct, it still must be proven.
In the end the book is an example of confirmation bias. McCarthy is certain that he is correct, and therefore he sees affirmation of his belief everywhere. The vague clues and coincidences he finds in the writings of North and Shakespeare are weak evidence. Weak evidence is still weak regardless of how much of it there is (and McCarthy doesn’t really offer that much). The time to believe something is after you are presented with convincing evidence and arguments, not before.
The performance was fine, although he mispronounces several of the names of Shakespeare’s characters.
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13 people found this helpful