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Plagiarism-Detection Software Confirms Shakespeare Play
mi tips us that software intended to help essay graders detect plagiarism has been used to attribute to Shakespeare — with high probability — a hitherto unattributed play, 'The Reign of Edward III.' It seems that the work was co-authored by Shakespeare and another playwright of the time, Thomas Kyd. "With a program called Pl@giarism, Vickers detected 200 strings of three or more words in 'Edward III' that matched phrases in Shakespeare's other works. Usually, works by two different authors will only have about 20 matching strings."
And the evidence continues to mount against him. All lies!
It seems that the work was co-authored by Shakespeare and another playwright of the time, Thomas Kyd.
Or Thomas Kyd plagiarized Shakespeare's work.
Game Show Host (John Cleese): Good evening and welcome to Stake Your Claim. First this evening we have Mr Norman Voles of Gravesend who claims he wrote all Shakespeare's works. Mr Voles, I understand you claim that you wrote all those plays normally attributed to Shakespeare?
Voles (Michael Palin): That is correct. I wrote all his plays and my wife and I wrote his sonnets.
Host: Mr Voles, these plays are known to have been performed in the early 17th century. How old are you, Mr Voles?
Voles: 43.
Host: Well, how is it possible for you to have written plays performed over 300 years before you were born?
Voles: Ah well. This is where my claim falls to the ground.
Host: Ah!
Voles: There's no possible way of answering that argument, I'm afraid. I was only hoping you would not make that particular point, but I can see you're more than a match for me!
Host: Mr Voles, thank you very much for coming along.
Voles: My pleasure.
Host: Next we have Mr Bill Wymiss who claims to have built the Taj Mahal.
Wymiss (Eric Idle): No.
Host: I'm sorry?
Wymiss: No. No.
Host: I thought you cla...
Wymiss: Well I did but I can see I won't last a minute with you.
Host: Next...
Wymiss: I was right!
In Soviet Russia, Shakespeare misspells THEE!
10 little-endian boys went out to dine, a big-endian carp ate one, and then there were -246.
Back in college I briefly took a creative writing course which was filled with snobs clutching their leatherbound Infinite Jest copies who used words like "perspectival" and "serendipitous."
During one of the meetings the lecture focused on poetic expression with an emphasis on sonnets. Homework consisted of writing an abab, cdcd, efef, gg sonnet and reading it outloud to the circle of douchebags who then offered their opinions about the piece. Being an industrious person, I applied my murky understanding of F/OSS principles to the fine craft of poetic expression and forked one of Shakespeare's obscure sonnets, changing some archaic words into more modern form.
I got a round of faint applause then dropped the class 2 weeks later.
Another use would be to apply the algorithms to religious books to reveal which parts were really inspired by a divinity, and which parts were simply invented by some random, power hungry, con man, to control his peers.
They could call it Bl@sphemy.
Shakespeare's stuff is still copyrighted? Damn, these extensions are getting ridiculous.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Getting access to the play was easy: admission was a penny. They most certainly did go to each other's works and steal phrases from each other. Shakespeare clearly cribbed from Marlowe, among others.
They stole stories from each other all the time. Stories were considered common property. Trying to protect them would seem as absurd as many Slashdotters consider software patents.
But they were fairly protective of the play as a whole. There was just one master copy, and each actor would get a copy literally of his lines, plus the cue that came before each. Saved copying expenses (it's not like they had a xerox) and also protected the plays. And those cue sheets were treated as secrets.
Eventually the play would be published (and performed without royalties), but Edward III was published fairly early in Shakespeare's career, and it would be hard to gather up enough material from the previously printed plays to make up a new one attributable to Shakespeare.
Attribution is more art than science, and attempts to do it with software are pretty controversial. Just because this software agrees with the experts this time doesn't fill me with confidence about the software.
I've looked at it myself, and it definitely fits in with Shakespeare's other early history plays. But it's not his best work. It has a few genuinely good scenes, and it deserves to be studied with the rest of the canon, but it's not exactly Hamlet or Richard III. I doubt most people will ever see it.
For example, these matching strings could just as well be common turns of phrase of the day. There doesn't seem to be any indication that the software was re-configured for common expressions of old English.
This is gibberish. The software isn't configured for common expressions of modern English, either. If you understand what it's doing, you should understand why no such configuration is necessary, as long as the two works being compared are contemporaneous. (Or heck, even if they aren't -- correlation should go down in that case, a high score is even more indicative when comparing non-contemporaneous authors.)
The study would be more plausible if works by two different authors IN ENGLAND IN THE YEAR 1600 contained 20 or so matching strings. But since that control group is missing -- so is the validity of the conclusion.
This is just misinformed. They've compared works by both the same author and different authors in England around 1600. It turns out it's just as true then as it is today that works by different authors contain significantly smaller sets of common wording. Indeed, this technique is used to identify which 60% of the play was written by Kyd (by comparing with his other work) and which 40% comes from The Bard. Comparing known works of either Kyd or The Bard with other works by the same author produce the same high correspondence, and comparing known works between the two different authors produces the same low correspondence.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Get a copy of the Unabomber Manifesto
http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt
Rate the entire work, and each numbered paragraph, for reading level using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Formula
http://www.readabilityformulas.com/flesch-grade-level-readability-formula.php
Split the work into 2 parts, one with paragraph reading level ratings greater than the overall score, one with the scores less than overall.
Apply plagiarism testing software to compare these two halves and see whether it says they were written by the same or by different persons.
Before the creation of plagiarism testing software, we still had several different reading level testing programs available. I did this test using three different programs. They said that at least two people wrote the work. Ted Kaczynski was never considered to have Multiple Personality Disorder, so if the results (still) say two people wrote it, each with their own style, then it's highly unlikely Kaczynski wrote it by himself.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Why the pedantry? Because, if you didn't know that, you really shouldn't be pontificating on linguistics or linguistic analysis.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
About six years ago, the Royal Shakespeare Company presented a performance of Edward III and attributed it to Shakespeare. It's accepted that Shakespeare didn't write every word of every plays in his canon (for example, he didn't write most of Pericles and Henry VIII) but there was obviously enough evidence for most Shakespeare scholars to accept that he wrote a substantial part of it. This latest piece of research is just a further piece of evidence, but it's nothing radically new.
Sir, I must point out inconsistencies in your argument. It seems that we have two choices:
But records exist that indicate otherwise in both cases. So, my contention is that the records are clearly falsified and we should err on the side of caution. I myself am owner of a corporation that is willing to step up and maintain the legacy of Shakespeare by collecting the royalties for when he returns(1) to claim them. I myself would take no salary for this, only a small(2) annual dividend(3) in order to ensure that the corporation can continue to protect this valuable intellectual property for the forseeable(4) future.
Of course, any product that has had @ in the name at any point in the last, oh, decade or so can not by any means be taken seriously.