Saturday, October 17, 2009
A computer program shows that William Shakespeare did not write the historical play of The Reign of King Edward III all by himself.
Using the software called Pl@giarism, Shakespeare experts found that he wrote the play in collaboration with popular contemporary playwright Thomas Kyd. The program has been developed by the University of Maastricht to detect plagiarism and keep its students honest.
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Amazng!
ReplyDeleteThe news here are that Marlowe did NOT write it.
ReplyDeleteYes, that was one theory! I'll bet there was a lot more collaboration involved among that group than has been discovered.
ReplyDelete<span><span>Yes, Marlowe is usually the one mentioned! I'm wondering if they will discover even more cases of collaboration among that productive group of writers. </span></span>
ReplyDeleteMarlowe-schmarlowe, it was Luther Blissett.
ReplyDeleteOh here we go again. Why is it impossible for everyone to believe (as most of the reliable evidence shows) that Shakespeare wrote the damn things himself? It's entirely possible, by the way, that parts of the plays were rewritten in collaboration with Bill's fellow actors--it was common for acting troupes to rewrite their plays as they went along, sometimes just hours before a perfomance, depending on how the audience had reacted to certain scenes or lines. So yes, it's entirely possible that there was some outside input and collaboration, but that doesn't mean that someone else wrote them or even co-wrote them.
ReplyDeleteAnother explanation: Shakespeare (who read several langauges despite the protestations of the someone-else-did-it) crowd, derived many of his stories from French, German, and (especially) Italian sources--there's a reason so many of them are set in Italy. It's highly likely that some "copying" of words and phrases might have crept into his work, inadvertent or not.
Unfortunately, the "Shakespeare didn't do it!" movement was initially born of a deeply classist prejudice which held that Shakespeare was an uneducated merchant's son (he was a merchant's son, but he was well educated) who could not possibly have had the learning or experience to write on the subjects that Shakespeare did or in the manner he did, or have any understanding of the workings of the nobility. All of which has been debunked over and over and OVER except by the flat-earthers of the Oxford Society or whatever they call themselves these days.
Rant over :-D