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Yes, Rubbo knew about linguistic patterns too. If I recall correctly, he did have interviews on it that were in the 2 hours version but that got cut between that and the 93 minute one (IIRC, the Beeb wanted it at 93 minutes and PBS optioned it at 87, though I might have that backwards). He spoke to me specifically about the patterns of article usage. I find the whole thing unlikely for the same reason I find most conspiracies unlikely: it assumes a greater level of competence than most people have. :-D But anyway, Rubbo could present his case much better than I can, simply because he is likely a believer and I am not, and also because he spent three years on it in research and production and I spent about 3 hours on it (I saw two showings--neither of them with Q&A from Shakespear scholars, though that would have been a site for a documentary of its own). KQ |
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Yes, Rubbo knew about linguistic patterns too. If I recall correctly, he did have interviews on it that were in the 2 hours version but that got cut between that and the 93 minute one (IIRC, the Beeb wanted it at 93 minutes and PBS optioned it at 87, though I might have that backwards). He spoke to me specifically about the patterns of article usage. I find the whole thing unlikely for the same reason I find most conspiracies unlikely: it assumes a greater level of competence than most people have. :-D But anyway, Rubbo could present his case much better than I can, simply because he is likely a believer and I am not, and also because he spent three years on it in research and production and I spent about 3 hours on it (I saw two showings--neither of them with Q&A from Shakespear scholars, though that would have been a sight for a documentary of its own). KQ |
I think it is reasonable to believe that contemporary standards of investigation are easily good enough to show beyond any reasonable doubt that Marlowe did not write Shakespeare's plays. Simple questions of overall style and quality of a work are the easiest for a layperson to see, but patterns of word use (particularly pronoun use) vary widely, and are often characteristic of a particular author. Then there is the question of vocabulary change, there is comparatively little vocabulary change between the plays we attribute to Marlowe, but a move to the Shakespeare plays shows a wide difference in vocabulary. So, on the level of language use alone, it is possible to determine that it is highly unlikely that Marlowe wrote Henry IV, or that Paul of Tarsus wrote the letter to the Hebrews.
And these techniques can be used even when an author is intentionally trying to mimic the work of another author, since such mimicry would require the use of these same tools for linguistic analysis, which is a skill few people have, and which nobody even knew about in Marlowe's day. MRC
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