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What if Shakespeare had a computer?
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| 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...
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