Translator, born in London, UK. He is known for his translation of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans in 1579, from which Shakespeare drew his knowledge of ancient history for many of his plays. He was knighted in 1591.
Life
He is supposed to have been a student of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1557.
Translations
Guevara
He translated, in 1557, Guevara's Reloj de Principes (commonly known as Libro áureo), a compendium of moral counsels chiefly compiled from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, under the title of Diall of Princes.
North translated from a French copy of Guevara, but seems to have been well acquainted with the Spanish version.
Eastern fables
His next work was The Morall Philosophie of Doni (1570), a translation of an Italian collection of eastern fables.
Plutarch's Lives
The first edition of his translation of Plutarch, from the French of Jacques Amyot, appeared in 1579.
Reception
It is almost impossible to over-estimate the influence of North's vigorous English on contemporary writers, and some critics have called him the first master of English prose.
Shakespeare
The Lives translation formed the source from which Shakespeare drew the materials for his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.
Tudor Translations
North's Plutarch was reprinted for the Tudor Translations (1895), with an introduction by George Wyndham.
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