Plagiarism detection tool solves mystery of Authorship of late 1500s unattributed play as one co-written by William Shakespeare. Sir Brian Vickers, a University of London Literature Professor gets credit for solving this mystery of the play, The Reign of Edward III.
Sir Brian Vickers, Literature Professor University of London, suggests this particular play was likely a collaborative effort between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd. Both Shakespeare and Kyd were popular playwrights of their time, however, at the time of Shakespeare's popularity, Kyd had only three credits to his name.
How did this intuitive professor arrive at his conclusions? Vickers arrived at his conclusions with the aid of software applications designed to discourage cheating among students by catching those who attempt to plagiarize the work of others without providing proper credit by citing.
In addition to now attributing The Reign of Edward III to Shakespeare and Kyd, Professor Vickers also has attributed four other plays to Kyd.
A program called Pl@giarism, aided Vickers in detecting 200 strings of three or more words in Edward III that matched phrases in Shakespeare's other works. Usually, works by two different authors will only have about 20 matching strings. "With this method we see the way authors use and reuse the same phrases and metaphors, like chunks of fabric in a weave," says Vickers.
According to Vickers, Kyd should get top billing on the play - about 60% of Edward III was likely written by him; the remaining 40% by Shakespeare. Using the plagiarism software, Vickers has also attributed four more anonymous plays to Kyd.
Source: Time
