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Shakespeare: so who wrote his stuff?

bigred

Penultimate Amazing
bigred
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:cool: Was it all him? Partly him? Completely someone else? If either of the latter 2, who?

Based on my admitted limited research, the Francis Bacon theory is way weak and easily dismissable. The De Vere one not so much, I don't "buy it" per se but buy its feasibility, at least for possibly some of his stuff.
 
I can't figure out how to write stuff like Shakespeare's. The obvious explanation, therefore, is that it was written by God an unnamed designer.
 
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I did.



Ok...it is rather amusing how many big names in history doubted this particular authorship. In my field alone, I recall (dimly) James, Wundt, Freud, and Skinner each mentioning in their autobiographies something about an early educational experience when they challenged a teacher about Shakespeare's works. Maybe examining the question is a nice introduction to critical thinking. Maybe not.

There is statistical evidence (using the frequencies of particular words used in plays, predicted by the words Shakespeare was known to be speaking in other plays at the time he was writing) that supports the idea that Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare. For the other theories, I think the best model is seen in our "conspiracy theory" sub-forum. "Shakespeare couldn't have known about X" is eerily similar, in context, to "there's no way a plane crash could have brought down the towers". Once the conclusion is determined, it is easy to cherry-pick, distort, and misconstrue data to support it.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Don't be silly; it was just a large number of monkies working overtime.
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Monkeys don't work overtime. They'll clock in on a Saturday, sure. But then they just sit in their cubicles, surfing the net, getting paid time and half to do it. What's worse, they sometimes use that time to look for better-paid jobs online!
 
When I was a young'un back in the 80's, GAMES Magazine had a cover story about solving who Shakespeare really was. I barely knew anything about him at the time and had no idea who the candidates were, but I do remember it veered off into some bizarre logic including secret puzzles left on tombstones.

Has anyone else seen this? Googling has failed me and I no longer remember whether what the conclusion was, whether it made sense, or even if it was an April Fool's stunt or not.


While I hold no hopes that it was a serious conclusion, it was entertaining.
 
Mojo said:
I can't figure out how to write stuff like Shakespeare's. The obvious explanation, therefore, is that it was written by God an unnamed designer.
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Yet another alleged atheist thinking, once again, about God. surprise surprise


TragicMonkey said:
Monkeys don't work overtime. They'll clock in on a Saturday, sure. But then they just sit in their cubicles, surfing the net, getting paid time and half to do it. What's worse, they sometimes use that time to look for better-paid jobs online!
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God bless the gov't.
 
Mercutio said:
There is statistical evidence (using the frequencies of particular words used in plays, predicted by the words Shakespeare was known to be speaking in other plays at the time he was writing) that supports the idea that Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare.
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1 - Have a link or other ref. to this evidence?

2 - Sorry not following. Because he used certain words a certain # of times this somehow proves he wrote all his works? ??


For the other theories, I think the best model is seen in our "conspiracy theory" sub-forum. "Shakespeare couldn't have known about X" is eerily similar, in context, to "there's no way a plane crash could have brought down the towers". Once the conclusion is determined, it is easy to cherry-pick, distort, and misconstrue data to support it.
Click to expand...
Yeah I hear ya and that's why I'm far from sold on any given "he didn't write all that stuff" viewpoint. It's just kind of an interesting thing to ponder..
 
T'ai Chi said:
I believe it is to infer, not to prove.

Things like word frequency of certain words, word length, sentence length, and many other things, go into showing someones' style.

Check out

http://www.amstat.org/publications/chance/162.complete.pdf

for an example.
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Somehow I feel let down by the choice of feature set in these kinds of analysis. Taking multiple words(normally 4 to 5) as a feature is sufficient to capture the style, if not the content the author.

It'd be nice to see them use this rather than just counting words and sentence length.
 
bigred said:
God bless the gov't.
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Oh, the monkeys are in the private sector. They wish they worked for the government, because then they'd get a lot more paid holidays, as well as job security so tight it approaches old-school tenure.
 
Jekyll said:
Somehow I feel let down by the choice of feature set in these kinds of analysis. Taking multiple words(normally 4 to 5) as a feature is sufficient to capture the style, if not the content the author.

It'd be nice to see them use this rather than just counting words and sentence length.
Click to expand...

You should submit your critique to the magazine, or write your own article, and see what the response is.

From what I can tell from the article, they did do more than "just" count words and sentence length.
 
Mercutio said:
There is statistical evidence (using the frequencies of particular words used in plays, predicted by the words Shakespeare was known to be speaking in other plays at the time he was writing) that supports the idea that Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare.
Click to expand...

I can see that this could prove all of Shakespere's works were written by the same person, but how would it prove that this person was actually the man we know as Shakespere? Do we have extensive writings we know for a fact were written by him to use as a comparison?
 
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