Play on words passes the test

Letter to the Editor

Observer, 19 Jan. 1986


I was interested to learn from Nigel Hawkes (last week) that my three years and 400 pages of work on Shakespeare's authorship of Edmund Ironside had been annihilated by the "pitiless scrutiny of science", i.e. the opinion of a technical college-lecturer. However, the Merriam/Morton method employed has shown to be incapable of distinguishing between playrights (see Dr. M.W.A. Smith's detailed disproof in "Computers and the Humanities" (1985).

    As my forhcoming edition of Ironside makes clear, its Shakespearian attribution is supported by Slater's well-accredited word-tests, and by computer analysis on the Brainerd system.  

Dr Eric Sams, Sanderstead, Surrey