Of interest ping....
OH goody. Another self taught expert using a computer to “prove” his thesis
What is the manuscript?
There have been hundreds, even thousands, of books arguing that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare.
But he did.
Plagiarism Software = Joe Biden’s Worst Nightmare
Sort of like when our founding fathers used Vattel’s “The Law of Nations” to form our laws and POTUS eligibility using the term “natural born citizen.” Sure, software may be accepted for colleges and the theater but they’d be too scared to use it for a constitutional crisis.
Interesting...the software is open source too. Maybe we could use against our bloggers here on FR.
I lack to ability write anything original.
I am plagued by something called eidetic memory.
If I read a book or article, it is stored in my head forever. The problem lies in that in attempting to write something original, I cannot tell what is mine from what I read 15 or 20 years ago. So, I can never publish anything, no matter how inspired. I once started writing a novel, only to discover that whole chapters were word for word from a sci-fi novel I read 50 years ago.
Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. It was another guy with the same name...
Did Shakespeare use a typewriter equipped with MS Word fonts? That would be a sign they’re fake but accurate.
And he made his money from putting on performances, not "intellectual property" (a concept that did not exist).
This is not new stuff.
Has the nyt run 0bama’s books through the system against, oh say, Bill Errs’ other works?
‘Plagiarism Software’ isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.
Great article, well-written and sourced. Another reason why the NYT is, in topics apart from politics, the best newspaper in the US.
Lemme guess:
The author of the consulted manuscript is a poor black boy, RIGHT..?
I think I can see where this is headed.
Nothing to get excited about . . . plagiarism wasn’t illegal in Shakespeare’s time; copyright didn’t exist.In fact, the Shakespeare folios which are the source of all our knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays were put together by his friends a decade after his death, from bits and pieces and memory. The reason was that paper was expensive - and that paper tended to get reused on that account. And, most importantly, Shakespeare couldn’t afford to publish his plays for the simple reason that competitors would simply have ripped them off without so much as a nod in his direction.
The publication of the folios was a labor of love and respect by his surviving friends, who couldn’t bear the thought that his genius would be lost to posterity. It was a consuming project, but never intended as a moneymaker. They couldn’t see a mass market for them; their only hope of breaking even was to make a limited number of copies on top-quality paper and sell them to the rich.
They were so hard up that they sold all the copies they made, including the very first copy which they edited to make later copies better. No two folios exactly alike, as updates were done between each folio printed.
This I recall from having read The Millionaire and the Bard, about the acquisition of folios by a Mr. Folger (not the coffee people but John D. Rockerfeller’s right hand man). The collection he amassed is in a library in the shadow of the SCOTUS building (when Folger was going over the plans for his library, he challenged a line item in the budget for air conditioners because he had no experience of them back then). Folger spent years scouting for the site, and years accumulating the real estate without inflating the price exorbitantly - then all of a sudden the government announced that it was using eminent domain to take over the area for use by the Library of Congress.
Folger didn’t take it lying down, tho - he wrote to the Librarian of Congress and notified him what a trove of Shakespeare folios and artifacts he had, and his plan to make his collection publicly accessible. He closed by saying that if he had to give up the site he had acquired, he would have to acquire a different site, which would not be in Washington - and possibly not in the US. The Librarian of Congress had to go back to Congress and get them to change the plan, after having fought for it. But Folger’s was an offer which could not be refused.
In the dedication to his manuscript, for example, North urges those who might see themselves as ugly to strive to be inwardly beautiful, to defy nature. He uses a succession of words to make the argument.... In the opening soliloquy of Richard III (“Now is the winter of our discontent …”) the hunchbacked tyrant uses the same words in virtually the same order to come to the opposite conclusion: that since he is outwardly ugly, he will act the villain he appears to be.That paragraph is a great demonstration that Shakespeare was in control of and shaping the material to make his plays say what wanted.