HUMANS 1, COMPUTERS NIL :

A Scholar Recants on his 'Shakespeare' Discovery (WILLIAM S. NIEDERKORN, 6/20/02, NY Times))

In 1995 Donald Foster, a professor of English at Vassar College, made a startling case for Shakespeare's being the author of an obscure 578-line poem called "A Funeral Elegy." After a front-page article about his methods of computer analysis in The New York Times--and after his reputation was further burnished by unmasking Joe Klein as the author of "Primary Colors"--the poem was added to three major editions of Shakespeare's works.

Now, in a stunning development that has set the world of Shakespeare scholarship abuzz, Professor Foster has admitted he was wrong. In a message dated June 12 and quietly left last Thursday on the Internet discussion group Shaksper (www.shaksper.net), he said that another poet and dramatist was the more likely author of the poem. He was joined in his recantation by Richard Abrams, a professor of English at the University of Southern Maine, who has been his close associate in the Shakespeare attribution. In their messages, both conceded the main point of an article in the May issue of The Review of English Studies by Gilles D. Monsarrat, a professor of languages at the University of Burgundy in France, a translator and editor of Shakespeare's works in French, and a co-editor of "The Nondramatic Works of John Ford."

The article compares the text of the poem with Ford's known work and concludes that the writing is Ford's. Professor Montserrat's method seems to derive from a close reading of the texts, rather than the kind of computer analysis Professor Foster uses.

Though Mr. Foster's book, Author Unknown : On the Trail of Anonymous, was great fun, it's impossible not to enjoy a human trumping a computer. It's like we just avenged Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 20, 2002 8:53 AM