Ever hear that Shakespeare was a 'plagiarist'? That he 'stole his plots'?
Maybe he did, but if that's so, he stole from the best. Put another way, some of us think he was a great student, mighty well read. We think you can tell that from his plays. And if we consider the sources he must have read in order to make such use of them in his works, we come across an anomaly. Many of them aren't in English, and weren't available in translation in England, in his lifetime.
Now if we're talking about the incumbent bard, the traditional Stratford man, we have to take note of the fact that he never left the country. He may have had access to some sort of library, but we're not talking about a half dozen books here. And books weren't that readily available, or reasonably priced.
Edward de Vere made the Grand Tour of Europe and had access to a spectacular library.
Sources of Shakespeare's plays, be sure to check out the list the poet read in other languages:
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