Shakespeare Had Collaborators, Says Computer Program
Thank goodness our e-mail addresses have changed since the days of Shakespeare 101, or we'd be getting big, fat "I told you so's" from our college professors. For as many years as he's been studied, scholars have raged about whether or not Shakespeare had collaborators (or snatched some language from playwrights of his day). However, Sir Brian Vickers at the University of London says he can now prove that Shakespeare got a hand, by using modern-day plagiarism technology.Vickers took 'Pl@giarism,' a program meant to detect whether or not students have been cheating, and took phrases from 'Edward III,' a play attributed to Shakespeare, and matched them against other dramatic pieces. According to Vickers, 60-percent of the play's phrases are reminiscent of Shakespearean contemporary Thomas Kyd, while only 40-percent suit the Bard himself, leading the professor to conclude that 'Eddy Three' is mostly a work of Kyd's.
The assertion that 'Edward III' isn't all Shakespeare's isn't all that astounding on its own; it's a jumbled, oddly paced play that feels like two narratives in one. However, the possibility that Shakespeare didn't spend his entire career as a lonely, independent author should rock traditional academics. It certainly would explain the weirdness of 'Titus Andronicus,' a gruesome work that includes 14 murders, several rapes, two cases of cannibalism via pie, one tongue without a throat, several buckets of blood, one live burial, and enough fili-, sui-, homicides to make Romeo and Juliet look like a puppet show. [From: TimesOnline.co.uk]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bill said 1:02PM on 10-13-2009
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.
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norrin96 said 1:26PM on 10-13-2009
Oh well if a computer program says it true . . .
G.I.G.O.
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EARLMARSHALL said 5:36AM on 10-14-2009
Pssssssssst...! Computers also reveal Shakespeare didn't write Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tartuffe and Our American Cousin!
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Ricardo Sawyer said 9:17PM on 10-13-2009
"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?
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John F.C. Taylor said 10:32PM on 10-13-2009
Want a different look at Shakespeare? Read Harry Turtledoe's Ruled Brittania.
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ruaxkodesh said 10:38PM on 10-13-2009
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"?
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J said 11:21PM on 10-13-2009
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.
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bulhar007 said 11:40AM on 10-14-2009
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!
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Daniel I. Radakovich said 1:31AM on 10-14-2009
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.
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crystal brass said 2:05AM on 10-14-2009
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.
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joel said 2:26AM on 10-14-2009
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.
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Lisa said 3:29AM on 10-14-2009
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.
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fathertimema said 4:27AM on 10-14-2009
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?
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audra said 5:16PM on 10-14-2009
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.
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Leila Brillson said 5:27PM on 10-14-2009
Hi Audra,
You may have read Shakespeare tons, but I've seen Shakespeare plenty. At the Globe in London three years ago, Titus was regularly interrupted by people fainting (not because of the heat...it was fine), but because of the ABSURD amounts of blood (http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Theatre-Review/titus-andronicus-comes-with-warning). Specifically in the scene where Lavinia reveals that her tongue has been slashed, and she opens her mouth and blood dribbles out (these are the stage directions).
Also, there is plenty of impaling in Shakespeare, but TA goes one step further and has throats slit on stage (Titus slays both Lavinia -- his daughter-- and Tamora on stage before Saturnius than kills him). At least in Hamlet, its poison, and then a stabbing behind a curtain, Lear features dead bodies being dragged ON stage, and Othello has suicide and strangling, but not throat slitting. It's very, very dark, and was forgotten and oft-neglected until recently. Many still believe its not fully his work. (Even Wiki says so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Andronicus#Reputation)
And buried alive? In the crucial end scene, Lucius says about Aaron: "Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;
There let him stand, and rave, and cry for food." Ok, it doesn't say "bury him alive!" but its pretty freaking clear that's what we are getting at here.