AI Reveals Shakespeare Had Some Help From Fletcher In Writing His Masterpieces

Researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) in determining the parts that Shakespeare wrote in one of his plays as opposed to those that were co-written with his collaborators. The AI gave back results that were both "expected and surprising" opening new doors for more possible discoveries.

Czech researcher Petr Plecháč has developed an AI algorithm that determines which part of the play "Henry VIII" was written by Shakespeare himself and which ones are likely written with contemporary and long-suspected collaborator John Fletcher.

The said algorithm studied the piece with the knowledge of the style, choice of words and rhyming of both writers into consideration.

“We employ combined analysis of vocabulary and versification together with machine learning techniques to determine which authors also took part in the writing of the play and what were their relative contributions,” Plecháč said in a blog post.

“Unlike most previous studies, we go beyond the attribution of particular scenes and use the rolling attribution approach to determine the probabilities of authorship of pieces of texts, without respecting the scene boundaries.”

The results were nothing new to the experts as it only supported long-running theories and conspiracies involving the works of Shakespeare.

“Our results highly support the canonical division of the play between William Shakespeare and John Fletcher proposed by James Spedding, but also bring new evidence supporting the modifications proposed later by Thomas Merriam,” Plecháč added.

This AI algorithm is also being eyed as an algorithm that may help identify plagiarism in various pieces.