Short answers, pulled from the story.
Thomas North (the 28th of May 1535 to circa 1604) was an English translator, soldier, and lawyer whose 1580 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives became the main source Shakespeare used for his Roman plays, including Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, and Antony and Cleopatra. In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare took whole speeches almost directly from North's prose.
North's translation is known as Plutarch's Lives or the Parallel Lives. First published in 1580 and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, it went through three editions, with a third expanded edition appearing in 1603. It was based on the French translation by Jacques Amyot rather than the original Greek.
North's first translation was Guevara's Reloj de Principes, published in 1557 under the English title Diall of Princes. The book compiled moral counsels drawn primarily from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and its ornate rhetorical style influenced a generation of English prose writers.
North was knighted in France in October 1591 by the Earl of Essex, just before the Siege of Rouen. His military career included commanding footmen in Ireland in 1580, fighting with the Earl of Leicester in the Low Countries in 1587, defending the Isle of Ely against the Armada, and returning to Ireland in 1596 to help suppress Tyrone's Rebellion.
North may have written plays for Leicester's Men; his brother Roger's accounts include a payment suggesting North staged a production at court in 1580. Some scholars have also proposed that North wrote the now-lost play Titus and Vespasian in 1562, which they believe Shakespeare later used as a source for Titus Andronicus.
Percy Long argued in 1905 that North's daughter Elizabeth was the real-world inspiration for the character "Rosalinde" in Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender. The identification rests on Spenser's own admission that "Rosalinde" was an anagram, which Long resolved to "Elisa Nord" - Elisa being a shortened form of Elizabeth and Nord being French for North.