SOURCE: Wyndham, George. “North's Plutarch.” In Essays in Romantic Literature, edited by Charles Whibley, pp. 117-235. London: Macmillan and Co., 1919.

In the following essay, originally published in 1895, Wyndham explains that Jacques Amyot's translation of Plutarch was the source for Sir Thomas North's translation, which in turn was used by Shakespeare in his Roman plays.

I

Plutarch was born at the little Theban town of Chæronea, somewhere about 50 a.d. The date of his birth marks no epoch in history; and the place of it, even then, was remembered only as the field of three bygone battles. The name Chæronea, cropping up in conversation at Rome, for the birthplace of a distinguished Greek lecturer, must have sounded strangely familiar in the ears of the educated Romans whom he taught, even as the name of Dreux, or of Tewkesbury, sounds strangely familiar in our own. But apart from...