Shakespeare and Neural Nets

[Terry Sejnowski]

from New Scientist 22 january 1994 p. 23

In an interesting article on the use of statistical measures to
assess the attribution of texts to authors, Robert Matthews and 
Tom Merrriam report that:

"Applying our neural network to disputed works such as 
'The Two Noble Kinsman' has produced some interesting
results and helped to settle some bitter arguments over authorship
of controversial texts. ...

"The first task was to train the network.  This we did by exposing
it to data extracted from a large number of samples of Shakespeare's
undisputed work, together with that of his successor with The King's
Men [a theater], John Fletcher. ... We then set the network loose on
'The Two Noble Kinsman'.  Drawing on a wide variety of essentially
subjective evidence, scholars have claimed that Shakespeare's hand
dominates Acts I and V, with much of the rest appearing to be by
Fletcher.  In March last year, our neural network agreed with these
attributions -- and proferred the extra opinion that Fletcher may
have received considerable help from Shakespeare in Act IV.  In short,
our neural network quantitatively supports the subjective view of its
much more sophisticated human counterparts that 'The Two Noble Kinsman'
is a genuine collaboration between Shakespeare and one of his
contemporaries."

These results will appear in the journal 'Literary and Linguistic Computing'.

A similar approach might be used to determine the contributions of
coauthors to scientific papers.

Terry

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