William Shakespearehas long been celebrate as the greatest playwright of all time ( and he ’s certainly the mostquoted ) . historian havespeculatedwhether his name might be a pseudonym for a lesser - known writer or whether he had aid in pen his play , among other hypothesis . In 2016 , Oxford University Press credited Shakespeare ’s contemporaneous Christopher Marlowe as carbon monoxide - writer of three plays inHenry VI .
Now , novel evidence has come to light that casts doubt on Shakespeare ’s only authorship , this time forHenry VIII . According to an analysis [ PDF ] published prior to peer review on arXiv.org , the Bard write approximately half ofHenry VIII . His modern-day , playwright John Fletcher , wrote the quietus .
The conclusion was establish on the findings of an algorithm taught to examine password choice and written material vogue , produce by research worker at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague .
The program first " discover " each writer ’s glide slope to their cunning by reading four gaming by Fletcher and by Shakespeare , pen at about the same clock time . The algorithm identifiedtraitsunique to each . Fletcher , for deterrent example , tended to useyeinstead ofyou , or‘emin seat ofthem .
The algorithm was then applied toHenry VIII . It earmarked the first two aspect as being write by Shakespeare . Fletcher wrote the next four . The writers ' style then mixed until by and by in the romp , when Shakespeare ’s voice appeared to take hold .
Collaboration among playwrights was common in the era , and scholars have longbelievedFletcher was somehow involved — perhaps attend an age Shakespeare .
Nineteenth - century literary psychoanalyst James Spedding theorized in 1850 that Fletcher had co - written the play ; Fletcher had come after Shakespeare as the house playwright of the King ’s Men Acting Company follow the Bard ’s death in 1616 . Spedding even suspect who wrote which scene . This most late analysis loosely describe up with his determination .
[ h / tSmithsonian ]
