Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship

In this book Craig, Kinney and their collaborators confront the main unsolved mysteries in Shakespeare's canon through computer analysis of Shakespeare's and other writers' styles. In some cases their analysis confirms the current scholarly consensus, bringing long-standing questions to something like a final resolution. In other areas the book provides more surprising conclusions: that Shakespeare wrote the 1602 additions to The Spanish Tragedy, for example, and that Marlowe along with Shakespeare was a collaborator on Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2. The methods used are more wholeheartedly statistical, and computationally more intensive, than any that have yet been applied to Shakespeare studies. The book also reveals how word patterns help create a characteristic personal style. In tackling traditional problems with the aid of the processing power of the computer, harnessed through computer science, and drawing upon large amounts of data, the book is an exemplar of the new domain of digital humanities.

Review of the hardback: ' … Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship deserves to become a landmark in its field. Not least, it establishes Shakespeare co-authorship on firm grounds.' Notes and Queries, Review of the hardback: '… takes us into a world where probabilities are assessed with mathematical accuracy. … Despite the measured and cautious style with which the computational evidence is presented, there is plenty more excitement in this book.' The Book Collector, Review of the hardback: 'Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship is an ambitious study, impressive in scope, and copiously illustrated with more than seventy tables and figures. The authors' aim of identifying an 'authorial fingerprint', mysteriously unique to a single writer, largely resistant to the passage of time or the constraints of genre, is appealing.' The Times Literary Supplement, 'It may contribute to the most exciting, and enduringly important, Shakespeare scholarship of our time …' Gary Taylor, University of Newcastle

Hugh Craig is Professor of English at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he also directs the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing. Arthur F. Kinney is Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Literary History at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Director of the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies.