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| Bard Bytes Dust |
| By: |
| Charles Burress |
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| From: |
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| The San Francisco Chronicle |
|Sunday, April 20th, MCMLXXXVI|
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| Typed in by: |
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| The Unknown User |
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{"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 UPPERCASE was in italics in the article}.
Shakespeare's greatest tragedy wasn't HAMLET. It was not having a comp-
uter.
Computers have come a long way since the Stone Age of the microchip
20 years ago, when they were used for such raw displays of brute technology as
hurling men to the moon.
Today, 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 perhpas 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-
inly 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.
Indignation still simmers over what a Bell Laboratories style-checker
did to the Gettysburg Address a couple of years back. Lincoln's first sentence:
FOURSCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO, OUR FOREFATHERS BROUGHT FORTH UPON THIS CONT-
INENT A NEW NATION, CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL - was impoved to read:
EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, OUR GRANFATHERFS CREATED A FREE NATION HERE.
With Lincoln, however, the style checkers were just flexing their cur-
sors. They were preparing the eventual assault on the Mt. Everest of liter-
ature - 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 public-
ations - turned his customized style-checker loose on Hamlet's "To be or not to
be" soliloquy. Ther 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, te 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 improved is pre-
sumptuous."
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 Shakespeare's fame often blinds us to
his actual merit. When someone says "Shakespeare," 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 wasn't perfect. It's helpful 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 SLEP - 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 confused. 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 satying 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 headaches are made on.
One can rummage through the play and find numerous examples 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, "Shake-
speare: The Complete Works." The sentence translates:
"Let a nag with a sore back flinch when the saddle is put on; our
shoulders feel no pain."
This example makes one thig clear: society owes a large debt to Shake-
spearean 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 acceptance 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
Shakespeare born anew for today's world: HAMLET, THE ROCK VIDEO.
Call Shakespeare 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
to the quick-thrill diet much slimmer thanks to the quick-thrill diet of modern
entertainment? The fault, dear William, is not in ourselves, but in our stars -
Joan Collins, Mr. T, Boy George...
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