Shakespeare Had Collaborators, Says Computer Program

A listing of Shakespeare's histories does not include this play, The Reign of King Edward III, because scholars could not find enough evidence that it was one of Shakespeare's works (it was published anonymously). There has always been debate on this issue.

In that light, all this new computer software has "proven" is that Shakespeare may deserve partial credit for collaborating on a play that was not already widely attributed to him, while proving nothing one way or the other about the authorship of the plays historically believed to be solely by Shakespeare.

Oh well if a computer program says it true . . .

G.I.G.O.

Pssssssssst...! Computers also reveal Shakespeare didn't write Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tartuffe and Our American Cousin!

"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever,- One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never." Gee, men art liars, and a computer sayeth so, hehehehehe, so does Much Ado about Nothing. "Fair is foul, and foul is fair." Thus Macbeth clears the air, hehehehehe, "Nothing is but what is not.". King Lear was more to the point, "Meantime we shall express our darker purpose." Poor Shakespeare, with his Nostredamusque Lear quote, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" For shame, as Hamlet's "That it should come to this!" does complain thy scrutiny. Oh well, we do have "He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man." Does he speak of thee?

Want a different look at Shakespeare? Read Harry Turtledoe's Ruled Brittania.

What are you, bone ignorant? Historically challenged? Never heard of a commonplace book? Everybody took from everybody else back then. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"?

He definitely wrote Titus, and it's highly underrated. Many scholars never thought he had anything to do with Edward III, so this is all speculation piled upon speculation.

But he was in a company, so the idea that he had collaborators is not news either...and isn't in dispute.

yes, even if Shakespeare did take words from other authors, it was acceptable in that day in age. besides, he's the one piecing them together. Computers are big geniuses!

All it means is the parts of the play were possibly written at several different times with different influences on the writer. People do NOT write the same way all the time. And plays even back then got altered for the talent using them as well as the intentions of the author. Playwriting is an evolutionary process and despite Darwinists' dogma survival is not always to the "fittest." [though Chaz. admitted this was not necessarily so].

Plagiarism is a recent concept anyhow. Back then there were NO copyright laws, and no-one would think to impose any.

Re. the gore in Titus, well, it sells! Shakespeare had to live. and the customer/consumer/playgoer is always right.

Speaking of plagiarism, our idiot vice president Joe Biden is a master at it, he was to lazy or to stupid the write his own thesis in law school.

shouldnt these same people and computers be working on something that actually matters...like cancer, or HIV??? i mean honestly, who the hell cares if billy shakespeare had help writing some verses...weve all been there.

This is funny. I was always under the impression that Shakespeare did not work alone. That was customary at that time. But now that a computer program says so, it's got to be fact. Edward III is not considered part of Shakespeare's output, so I think that is a poor example. I agree with the poster who said there were no copyright laws in those days, so plagiarism was a creative reality. There is also ongoing debate about Mozart having plagiarized, which wouldn't be surprising since he produced SO much in his short lifetime, and had to write masses for every Sunday. I'm sure (and I know) that even today, college professors who are working toward that blessed PhD, often engage the resources of the classes they teach, and the papers they assign, as fodder for that all important treatise that no one else has written, and which they will call their own.

I had to read Shakespeare crap in high school english class. What a bunnch of crap.
They should of burried his writings with him. What is so great about this guy?

First of all, no one is surprised that Shakespeare didn't work alone. Big whoop. Secondly, did the idiot who wrote this article even *read* Titus Andronicus? How in God's name is it "weird"? The violence depicted in Shakespeare's plays always occurred off-stage. We must also refrain from putting the play in a contemporary context--in Elizabethan times, violence was a part of daily life. Public executions were the 'highlight' of any day; crowds gathered around, with children in tow, to watch bear baiting, quartering, etc. The description of violence in Titus wouldn't have phased them in the least.
There are not "several" rapes in T.A., just one. There is one mention of cannibalism, although two sons were eaten (by an completely unaware mother). I do not recall any live burials at all, and I am have read T.A. extensively. Also, no one commits suicide in the play. There were not "buckets of blood", because, as I stated earlier, violence was never shown onstage.
The Neanderthal that wrote this apparently watched the Julie Taymor film version and decided that it was exactly like the play.