William Shakespeare’s debt to other dramatists who helped to write works published under his name is being fiercely debated and dividing scholars. As one side prepares to publish research that they claim shows the hand of Christopher Marlowe in parts of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the other has written an attack in the Times Literary Supplement on their use of “an opportunistic collection of untested methods” that “no reputable scholar would accept”. The disagreement concerns the use of algorithms to identify stylistic traits. Gary Taylor, editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare, is a chief proponent of the technique, which he has used to compare speeches and scenes with the work of authors other than Shakespeare. In 2016 he claimed that Marlowe

Source: The Times April 15, 2020 22:52 UTC