How We Know Shakespeare Borrowed Thousands of Lines & Passages from North (Response to Ros Barber 1)

"Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare's Plays" is now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BM3KV3M4/ This video is in response to Dr. Ros Barber's review of the argument that Shakespeare adapted old plays originally written by Thomas North. Her focus is on the many thousands of North's lines and passages that inspired similar passages in the Shakespeare canon. She contends that while some are compelling, others are likely to be coincidental. This video shows that Barber is making a very common probabilistic error, focusing on one shared element at a time and not on the entire cluster. Forensic linguistics and probabilistic math confirm that essentially none of the parallel passages could have occurred by chance.
The fact is Shakespeare has borrowed more passages from North than any other writer has borrowed from an earlier contemporary in the traceable history of English literature. Shakespeare's plays even include borrowings from North's unpublished writings--like his handwritten travel-journal and his marginalia. The simple explanation for this is North was the one who was recalling all his old passages, and Shakespeare was merely adapting North's old plays. This is consistent with still other evidence -- like the well-known fact that Shakespeare did indeed adapt old plays, that North is on record for having written now-lost plays for Leicester's men, and that a detailed biography of North's life helps reconstruct the Shakespeare canon, play by play. See also Michael Blanding's "In Shakespeare's Shadow."