AKA Shakespeare: A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question

by Peter A. Sturrock

AKA Shakespeare—comprising this book and the accompanying website—offers a do-it-yourself kit to help you solve the mystery of the identity of the Great Author who was either named Shakespeare or adopted that name as his nom-de-plume. AKA Shakespeare develops a scientific approach to this intriguing, four-hundred-year-old question. To explain the approach and develop the necessary concepts and to enliven the discussion, the book is written in the form of a dialog. To begin with, one participant is a Stratfordian, and a second participant is a skeptic. Two more participants try to be impartial and to steer the debate along scientific lines. Each reader is encouraged to enter his or her own judgments (in a simple numerical form) concerning each of several separate issues. A hidden magician on the website, affectionately known as Prospero, will analyze those judgments and return the results to the reader. The participants eventually agree on the identity of the author, with very high confidence levels. Each reader can enter his or her responses to the questions, and so decide whether or not to agree."

344 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 2013

Reviews

[Randy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have no opinion on the Authorship Question... I am intrigued by the notion that de Vere wrote the plays and/or the sonnets, and it is fascinating how little information we really have about the Bard of Stratford.

So I was hoping this book would clear up matters for me. Sadly, it does not.

Instead, it is a textbook example, using the claim of "statistics" or "science" to buttress one's own biases and distortions.

The book does touch on some of the more disturbing issues and questions causing us to doubt Shakespeare's authorship. Unfortunately, it doesn't clear them up... it takes them at face value and/or neglects to consider alternative explanations.

I guess it doesn't really matter. If the author was not Shakespeare and wanted to remain anonymous, he's getting his wish.

Take a pass. This is neither a good treatise on its subject nor a good example of statistical analysis.

[Astragen · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.


Small Latin and Smaller Greek: “AKA Shakespeare - A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question” by Peter Sturrock Published 2013.
 
In my day job, once in a while, especially when I’m getting my feet wet with a new client, I get emails from clients saying stuff like this: “I’m really excited to have you as my new Service Manager”. This is not much different when I get an automatic response from an internet service that goes like: “Hmm, that’s not the right password. Please try again or request a new one” (or something similar). I always assumed “Hmm” was intended to make me think that the automated response was typed, in real time, by a real Turing being – a being who is my pal and writes to me in a conversational style, even using conversational interjections like “Hmm.” Ultimately this is an insult to my “intelligence”. Although I only get slightly miffed when I get responses like those above coming from a machine (or from a new client...), I get real mad when I’m reading a book, wherein the writing is histrionic, narcissistic, and bloated. And I’m not even talking about the supposed “science” therein. I don’t know where this guy, Peter Sturrock, stands when it comes to the authorship question, but after reading this drivel, I think he takes sides with the likes of Derek Jakobi and Mark Rylance.
 
If you're into Shakespeare and bad science, read the rest of the review elsewhere.

[Ted2u2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an excellent introduction to the longstanding debate over the authorship of the Shakespearean plays. The author's special expertise in that part of statistical analysis called Bayes' theorem is indeed a highly relevant heuristic for comprehending the various strands of evidence in the debate.

The book is clearly-written, reader friendly, and appropriate for stimulating further discussion, debate and inquiry. However, some of the examples used on the Oxfordian side, for example the alleged cryptograms in the Stratford monument, are of dubious value.

More fundamentally, as a statistics friend and fellow Oxfordian Sam Saunders has remarked in his technical analysis of Sturrock's procedure, there is a problem with the book's methodology for obtaining the values used for analysis, which depends on the reader's own subjective valuation of evidence that it is intrinsically non-quantitative: "it is not clear that personal opinions can ever satisfy the rules of Boolean algebra.... [the procedure] substitutes opinion for probability measure. This is akin to utilizing geometry but not identifying what is meant by the words line or an angle." For this reason, while the book is still valuable (as one of a number of introductory texts, including Mark Anderson's *Shakespeare By Another Name*), I can only give it four stars.