What if Shakespeare had a computer? _____________________________ | | | Bard Bytes Dust | | By: | | Charles Burress | | | | From: | | | | The San Francisco Chronicle | |Sunday, April 20th, MCMLXXXVI| | | | Typed in by: | | | | The Unknown User | |_____________________________| ("Why", you may ask, "in the world would someone type something straight in from the newspaper?". The answer is: Because I find this an interesting and funny article, and thought that some people that don't get the Chronicle might want to read it. By the way, this was typed in on the 21st of April, but is yesterday's paper.) (Note: Anything in ALL UPPER- CASE was in italics in the article.) Shakespeare's greatest tragedy wasn't HAMLET. It was not having a computer. Computers have come a long way since the Stone Age of the micro- chip 20 years ago, when they were used for such raw displays of brute tech- nology as hurling men to the moon. To- day, the computer is a creature of sophisticated finesse, shooting for the moons of the mind. One result is a revolution in the art of writing, a transformation unmatched since perhaps adverbs first emerged from pre-lingual ooze. The breakthrough consists of a masterpiece of word-processing software known modestly as a style-checker. Like a jeweler's lens, it can reveal a seem- ingly perfect gem of writing to be a rough-hewn landscape of blemishes. You put in the prose, the computer spits out the mistakes. But its crowning achievement is the next step: It composes improvements. This brave new world, however, has not been tempest- free. While style checkers are winning friends on campuses and in offices, they have met stubborn resistance from the battlements of literature. Indig- nation still simmers over what a Bell Laboratories style-checker did to the Gettysburg Address a couple of years back. Lincoln's first sentence: FOUR- SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO, OUR FORE- FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH UPON THIS CONT- INENT A NEW NATION, CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSIT- ION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL - was improved to read: EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, OUR GRANDFATHERS CREATED A FREE NATION HERE. With Lincoln, how- ever, the style-checkers were just flexing their cursors. They were pre- paring the eventual assault on the Mt. Everest of literature - Shakespeare. That sublime peak was claimed recently when a Berkeley scientist revealed he had successfully trained his computer to sniff out Shakespeare's flaws. Dr. C. J. Wallia - a Stanford Ph.D. and consultant in electronic publications - turned his customized style-checker loose on Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy. Their computer coughed up 34 errors, found the language "obsolete" and "overwritten," and gave this 15 word alternative: IS IT BETTER TO LIVE WITH BAD LUCK OR END IT ALL AND HAVE NIGHTMARES. There we have it, the high- water mark of the computer as a young artist. But were Shakespeare's lovers grateful? "I think it's hideous" said Jerry Turner, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, the 50- year-old company that has performed more Shakespeare for more people than any theater in America. "It's absurd," he added. "Shakespeare's work is the standard of the best literature there is. Any attempt to say it can be im- proved is presumptuous." Turner's not alone. A chorus of ridicule greeted Wallia's effort. But let us not be too hasty to join the herd. There's little profit in literary lemminghood. If truth be told, the glare of the fame of Shakespeare often blinds us to his actual merit. When someone says "Shake- speare," we genuflect from habit. To praise Shakespeare or to bury him - that is not the question. The issue is, no matter how great Shakespeare is, can he be improved by computer? If so, the world has suffered an immeasurable tragedy. Millions of readers died knowing only a Shakespeare who did not fulfill all his potential - a stunted Shakespeare. Our highest standard of literature has been but a poor shadow of what it could be. In short, the crown jewels of writing are riding on Wallia's experiment. Let us then remove the literary chastity belts from our minds and consider the possibility that Shakespeare was not perfect. It's help- ful to recall that other Elisabethan giant, Ben Jonson, one of Shakespeare's ardent but not fawning admirers. Jonson wrote: THE PLAYERS HAVE OFTEN MENTIONED IT AS AN HONOR TO SHAKESPEARE, THAT IN HIS WRITING HE NEVER BLOTTED OUT A LINE MY ANSWER HATH BEEN, "WOULD HE HAD BLOTTED A THOUSAND." Such a view, of course, is merely a generaliztion. The real test must be to examine the text itself. This means casting an uncowed eye on the Hamlet speech, as composed without a computer: TO BE OR NOT TO BE - THAT IS THE QUESTION. Already we have a problem. "To be or not to be" is not a question. But let's not quibble Hamlet is clearly torn between living and dying - or at least it appears that way until the second sentence: WHETHER 'TIS NOBLER IN THE MIND TO SUFFER THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE OR TO TAKE ARMS AGAINST A SEA OF TROUBLES AND BY OPPOSING END THEM. Let us ignore the metaphoric indigestion of taking arms against a sea. Here the choice that divides Hamlet is not life or death, but passive suffering vs. active opposition. We naturally go to the third sentence to find out what Hamlet's talking about, and run into this: TO DIE, TO SLEEP - NO MORE, AND BY A SLEEP TO SAY WE END THE HEARTACHE AND THE THOUSAND NATURAL SHOCKS THAT FLESH IS HEIR TO. Now he's back on the death trip. No wonder Hamlet's conf- used. On top of that, this sentence is not a sentence but a fragment without proper subject and verb, and thus not a complete thought. Moreover, try saying it out loud. It hardly rolls trippingly on the tongue. From there it's downhill at a gallop. We hit a BODKIN and some FARDELS and phrases like THE SPURNS THAT PATIENT MERIT OF THE UNWORTHY TAKES, and other such stuff as head- aches are made on. One can rummage through the play and find numerous ex- amples of that country from whose bourne no comprehension returns. Here is a typical Hamlet remark from later in Act III: LET THE GALLED JADE WINCE, OUR WITHERS ARE UNWRUNG. The meaning of this sentence may not leap out at first glance. Luckily, we have the footnote in Professor G. B. Harrison's widely used tome, "Shakespeare: The Complete Works." The sentence trans- lates: "Let a nag with a sore back flinch when the saddle is put on; our shoulders feel no pain." This example makes one thing clear: society owes a large debt to Shakespearean scholars, who have kept the old Bard afloat on a sea of footnotes. Think of Wallia's computer as Galileo's telescope. First comes the shock of heresy. Then accept- ance of Shakespeare's not being the center of the literary universe.Finally we enjoy the discovery's benefits. For example, if Hamlet's 265-word soliloquy can be trimmed to 15 words, then the same rate of improvement can reduce the entire 4 hour play to a 1980s size bite of culture - 14 minutes. Add drums and electric strings, and imagine Shake- speare born anew for today's world: HAMLET, THE ROCK VIDEO. Call Shake- speare a casualty of progress, a moldy scribbler, an emperor unclothed - but do not call him to account. He's not to blame. How could he have known our vocabulary and attention spans would become much slimmer thanks thanks to the quick-thrill diet of modern enter- tainment? The fault, dear William, is not in ourselves, but in our stars - Joan Collins, Mr. T, Boy George... ======================================= And if you enjoyed this TextFile, call The Works - 914's Textfile BBS. (914)-238-8195 24 Hrs. 900+ Textfiles Online 300/1200 Baud, N,8,1. 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