This headline, while technically accurate, is misleading.
> The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden.
Though plagiarism software was at the heart of McCarthy's work, the use of that term in the NYT's headline is pure clickbait. Shakespeare lived in a remix culture more like our contemporary one rather than late-20th century attitudes, and even the concept of plagiarism would likely have seemed odd to him and his contemporaries. He died a century before the Statute of Anne passed.
Though I'm sure you're aware of this, I'll mention for others the theory that Shakespeare was actually Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford[1], and therefore there would be no mystery about how he could have access. The commonly accepted William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon allowed his children to grow up illiterate (this is not a disputed fact); for someone who valued the English language so much, that seems unimaginable. For many reasons, I find the Edward de Vere theory[2] much more plausible.
Next thing you know, someone's going to rediscover commedia dell'arte!
edit for substance:
Plots of Commedia dell'arte scenarios, well known in England at the time Shakespeare was alive and writing, bear close similarities to the broad strokes of the plots of many of his plays. ( https://thought.artsci.wustl.edu/podcasts/commedia-dellarte )
That doesn't seem accurate, the unpublished document was selected first before being matched using the software.
I'm not sure how they are dating the unpublished document so as to be certain which is the earlier source. The NYT just says McCarthy claims the production date.
Hmm. Unfortunate title by the NYT. “The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden.”
And the authors didn't use plagiarism software, the article never mentions which exact piece of software they use but it does say, “Scholars have used computer-assisted techniques in the humanities for several decades. Most of that scholarship, however, uses function words such as articles and prepositions to create a “digital signature” that can be used to identify a writer as author or co-author of another work, rather than using comparatively rare words to locate a source.
Mr. McCarthy was inspired to use plagiarism software by the work of Sir Brian Vickers, who used similar techniques in 2009 to identify Shakespeare as a co-author of the play “Edward III.” While the book has been received favorably, the statistical techniques used have not yet been subjected to a rigorous review by other scholars in the digital humanities field.
The first part is accurate and refers to computational stylometry or lesserly statistical stylometry[0] Software like that gives you a measure for similarity in style. I've been to a couple of academic talks on the topic–what the software does is track stylistically invariant features, this can be function word relative frequency, but it also can track infrequently used words (or phrases). Using this technique (computational method) you can compare texts and see how they cluster. Similar texts will cluster closer together but it does not mean the author's plagiarised each other, just that have similar "styles" for one definition of style. My understanding of plagiarism software is that it looks for similarities in content, not form.
> the authors didn't use plagiarism software, the article never mentions which exact piece of software they use
The article (at least now) says "Mr. McCarthy used decidedly modern techniques to marshal his evidence, employing WCopyfind, an open-source plagiarism software".
I have an article about copying between dance sources of the same era... since copying wasn't considered a bad thing, it's nice that folks weren't rephrasing to pretend like they weren't:
This is going to make for interesting research into Shakespeare's art, the same way that the North version of Plutarch's Lives informs the famous "The barge she sat in" passage from Antony and Cleopatra: http://bloggingshakespeare.com/the-barge-she-sat-in
I also think that it's interesting that one of the main texts that this article applies to is King Lear, which also takes inspiration from the Book of Job, a contemporary Elizabethan play called Gorbuduc, prior versions of Lear ("Leir"), and the Cinderella story, among others. Generally, it's interesting to look at how Shakespeare inverts, changes, or fuses his sources: Lear is, like Job, an intensely ordered play that motions towards disorder, and like Job it contains a menagerie of animals referenced incidentally -- Shakespeare alone elevates this to a thematic discussion of "nature," which in turn also provides him a rich vein of material, since "nature" (i.e. mother nature, order, human nature, etc.) and "natural" (i.e. legitimate child, fool, unvarnished truth) had multiple meanings that provide thematic offshoots for the play. All of which is to say that the key isn't just what sources the plays but what Shakespeare does to transform his source material.
[+] [-] leereeves|8 years ago|reply
> The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden.
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialbat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mysterypie|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Vere%2C_17th_Earl_of...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfordian_theory_of_Shakespear...
[+] [-] bokononon|8 years ago|reply
> Mr. McCarthy focused on Thomas North, a translator of Plutarch’s “Lives,” whom Shakespeare relied on heavily for his dramas.
...
> Mr. McCarthy found a reference to the manuscript by George North, a likely cousin of Thomas...
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] infradig|8 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevillean_theory_of_Shakespe...
[+] [-] hprotagonist|8 years ago|reply
edit for substance:
Plots of Commedia dell'arte scenarios, well known in England at the time Shakespeare was alive and writing, bear close similarities to the broad strokes of the plots of many of his plays. ( https://thought.artsci.wustl.edu/podcasts/commedia-dellarte )
This doesn't really connote plagiarism.
[+] [-] 21|8 years ago|reply
I'm sure that in the next 20 years some "dumb" math software, some sort of "Coq neural network arxiv crawler" will find some new math.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|8 years ago|reply
I'm not sure how they are dating the unpublished document so as to be certain which is the earlier source. The NYT just says McCarthy claims the production date.
[+] [-] igravious|8 years ago|reply
And the authors didn't use plagiarism software, the article never mentions which exact piece of software they use but it does say, “Scholars have used computer-assisted techniques in the humanities for several decades. Most of that scholarship, however, uses function words such as articles and prepositions to create a “digital signature” that can be used to identify a writer as author or co-author of another work, rather than using comparatively rare words to locate a source.
Mr. McCarthy was inspired to use plagiarism software by the work of Sir Brian Vickers, who used similar techniques in 2009 to identify Shakespeare as a co-author of the play “Edward III.” While the book has been received favorably, the statistical techniques used have not yet been subjected to a rigorous review by other scholars in the digital humanities field.
The first part is accurate and refers to computational stylometry or lesserly statistical stylometry[0] Software like that gives you a measure for similarity in style. I've been to a couple of academic talks on the topic–what the software does is track stylistically invariant features, this can be function word relative frequency, but it also can track infrequently used words (or phrases). Using this technique (computational method) you can compare texts and see how they cluster. Similar texts will cluster closer together but it does not mean the author's plagiarised each other, just that have similar "styles" for one definition of style. My understanding of plagiarism software is that it looks for similarities in content, not form.
source: I'm supposed to be a digital humanist! :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry#Current_research
related: “The Secret Life of Pronouns: James Pennebaker at TEDxAustin”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGsQwAu3PzU
[+] [-] JorgeGT|8 years ago|reply
The article (at least now) says "Mr. McCarthy used decidedly modern techniques to marshal his evidence, employing WCopyfind, an open-source plagiarism software".
This seems correct, and the software is indeed intended to be used primarily to detect plagiarism: http://plagiarism.bloomfieldmedia.com/wordpress/
[+] [-] pcnix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greglindahl|8 years ago|reply
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/articles/copying.html
[+] [-] foxhedgehog|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxhedgehog|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hprotagonist|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|8 years ago|reply