Posted on November 25, 2019 at 12:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Machine learning has confirmed a 19th-century literary analyst’s theory about the authorship of the play Henry VIII.

Back in 1850, James Spedding noticed a similarity between sections of Henry VIII and plays written by a contemporary of William Shakespeare named John Fletcher.

Some of his fellow scholars agreed with him; others argued for a different co-author.

The MIT Technology Review now reports that Petr Plecháč, of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, has run the oeuvres of both Shakespeare and Fletcher through an algorithm to teach it their styles.

With that knowledge, the machine can identify which spots are Shakespeare’s and which belong to Fletcher.

You can see the results in a post from MIT Technology Review.

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