theparisreview: Big data doesn’t care what you learned in...

theparisreview:

Big data doesn’t care what you learned in college. Big data laughs at you and your myopic conception of “the author.” Big data takes an active pleasure in making you go, like, That’s fucking crazy! So big data has determined that Shakespeare probably collaborated with Christopher Marlowe on the three Henry VI plays, and the New Oxford Shakespeare editions are happy to announce it: “For the New Oxford Shakespeare scholars ran tests to determine whether authors like Marlowe could be reliably identified by the ways they used language—like frequent use of certain articles, and certain words commonly occurring in a row, or being close to each other in the text. Once this was determined, researchers applied these patterns back to texts, to see if they suggested an author other than Shakespeare. If results came out positive, further tests were run … Marlowe appears to have written most of ‘Henry VI, Part 1,’ while Shakespeare wrote the largest share of Part 3. Lead authorship on Part 2 is harder to identify.”

This and more in today’s culture roundup.