The Finding in the Folio - Vox Popoli - (Shakespeare was a plagiarist fake! - CL)

 Dennis McCarthy offers further proof that Ben Jonson, and a number of his colleagues, knew very well that Thomas North was the original author of most of the Shakespeare plays.

As we shall see in this article, Jonson’s celebrated ode contains a shocking secret—a dead giveaway to the true origin of the canon. In other words, the answer to the most significant literary question in history—who was the original author of Shakespeare’s plays?—has been sitting prominently in the front of the First Folio for the last 400 years. Jonson was not being remotely subtle…

As I frequently point out with no hyperbole: the second greatest plagiarist in history has not borrowed half as much, perhaps not one-tenth as much, from another writer as Shakespeare has from North......

https://voxday.net/2026/06/07/the-finding-in-the-folio/ 

....But even Jonson’s title clues you in: “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author Master William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us.” It doesn’t refer to what Shakespeare wrote or created—but what he hath left us. And as Digges and Dryden both knew, the poem does not really commend Shakespeare; rather it stands as a sobering rebuttal to the idolatry that the volume would arouse. And in the middle of this ode, the poet identifies the playwright who was the true, original author of Shakespeare’s plays. Jonson’s “tribute” to Shakespeare was his last act of vengeance, a carefully framed reprise of his previous denunciations of the crow cum swan. And it is one of the last pieces in the puzzle that exposes North as the true genius behind the Shakespeare canon.

It’s interesting to see how long ago writers were having to skirt the mainstream narrative in order to avoid getting canceled.