No more doubt over play by William
Shakespeare
By Los Angeles Times, adapted by Newsela staff on 04.21.15
Word Count 621
(From left) the Cobbe Portrait (1610), the Chandos Portrait (early 1600s) and the Droeshout Portrait (1622) are three of
the most prominent portraits of poet and playwright William Shakespeare. Wikimedia Commons
New research has found that an old play was probably written by William Shakespeare.
“Double Falsehood” is a play said to have been written by the 16th-century poet and
playwright. However, for almost 300 years there has been some dispute about who wrote
the play. The new research says it is almost certainly the work of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare appears to have had some assistance in the project from John Fletcher. He
lived in Shakespeare's time and is thought to have co-written three plays with Shakespeare
near the end of Shakespeare's life. One of those plays was similar to “Double Falsehood.”
Nevertheless, “the entire play was consistently linked to Shakespeare with a high
probability,” the authors of the new study wrote.
Computers Scanned Millions Of Words
Those findings came after two researchers used computers to study the play’s language.
They counted every single pun, put-down or preposition. The researchers’ method was an
extreme form of the practice of “stylometry,” a practice that has long been used by
scholars of literature. They used computers to pore through millions of sentences of text.
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The computers were aided by programs called machine-learning programs. The programs
let the computers quickly learn types of language that show up regularly. The repeated
language becomes an author’s “signature.” When the authorship of a book or play is in
doubt, computer stylometry can compare authors’ “signatures” to that of the disputed
work. The result is a scientific basis for deciding who the author was.
In the end, two professors from the University of Texas in Austin declared that the author of
“Double Falsehood” was Shakespeare. It was not written by Lewis Theobold, a devoted
follower of Shakespeare, they said.
There Were Suspicions
Theobold was a Shakespeare scholar and collector of manuscripts. He published the play
in 1728. Theobold claimed it came from three original manuscripts written by the Bard. The
Bard was Shakespeare's nickname. Those manuscripts, however, were said to have
burned in a library fire. In the absence of proof, scholars became suspicious that Theobold
was only pretending that the play was written by Shakespeare.
University of Texas professors Ryan L. Boyd and James W. Pennebaker conducted the
study. The computers they used studied 54 plays — 33 by Shakespeare, nine by Fletcher
and 12 by Theobold. The machines computed each play’s average sentence length. They
calculated how difficult the writing was, as well as the psychological elements of its
language. The computers also figured out the frequent use of unusual words.
Boyd and Pennebaker said the study showed evidence that the work was not a fake by
Theobold.
Writing Is A Personality Portrait
Being able to create a writer’s signature opens up new ways of proving who wrote
something, according to Boyd and Pennebaker. But they emphasized that it can also be
used to provide a “better understanding" of who a person was and how they thought.
Boyd and Pennebaker pointed to research that has been around for a while. It shows that
the way writers use language, the words they choose, and even the length of their
sentences, shows things about how a writer thinks and acts. A deep study of a writer’s
verbal output can “paint a very rich picture of who that person is, how he or she thinks, and
what he or she thinks about,” they wrote.
For Shakespeare, much of whose life remains a mystery, the study offers a bit of
information: his frequent use of prepositions suggests he was very educated in grammar.
His heavy use of “social content words” (instead of words related to thinking or feeling)
suggests he was more attentive to how people in society acted and was less concerned
with the way people thought or felt, the authors wrote.
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Quiz
1
Select the paragraph from the section "Computers Scanned Millions Of Words" that gives
details about the process researchers used to analyze "Double Falsehood."
2
Which sentence helps to show how researchers studied the play "Double Falsehood"?
3
4
(A)
They used computers to pore through millions of sentences of text.
(B)
The programs let the computers quickly learn types of language that show
up regularly.
(C)
When the authorship of a book or play is in doubt, computer stylometry can
compare authors’ “signatures” to that of the disputed work.
(D)
In the end, two professors from the University of Texas in Austin declared
that the author of “Double Falsehood” was Shakespeare.
Select the sentence from the article that contains a word or phrase that means "committed."
(A)
The result is a scientific basis for deciding who the author was.
(B)
One of those plays was similar to “Double Falsehood.”
(C)
They calculated how difficult the writing was, as well as the psychological
elements of its language.
(D)
It was not written by Lewis Theobold, a devoted follower of Shakespeare,
they said.
Read the sentence from the article.
However, for almost 300 years there has been some dispute about
who wrote the play.
Which word could replace "dispute" WITHOUT changing the meaning of the sentence above?
(A)
accord
(B)
harmony
(C)
variance
(D)
controversy
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