Disputed Shakespeare Play Is 'Proven' Genuine

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28 points·ColinWright··4 comments

Here's a longer description of the research methodology:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/13/shakespeare...

As much as I would like this to be true, I'm extremely skeptical of any claims to have "proven" something via a method like text analysis. There's just too much room for selection bias (i.e., did they apply their methodology to every play written between 1550 and 1620 to see how many false positives it resulted in? What if the use of function words in the Shakespeare corpus was less distinctive than they imagine?) Though to be fair, I think that language like "proven" is being added by journalists interpreting the study rather than the authors themselves. It's certainly an interesting lead for future research into the provenance of the play, at any rate.

Exactly, it's not like they were scoring William Shakespeare versus every other (possibly unknown) playwright alive at the time, nor do they have the training data they'd need for it.

Also, it's possible the play was derived from Cardenio (which would explain the writing style), but is not Shakespeare's per se. They are very similar.

It's fascinating to think of Shakespeare reading Don Quixote and adapting a story from it for one of his later plays.

I knew that Shakespeare and Cervantes had died within 10 days of each other but was surprised to find out that Cervantes lived to 68 while Shakespeare was only 52.

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