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A more recent computer-generated concordance is Thomas Clayton'sThe “Shakespearean” Addition in the Booke of Sir Thomas Moore: Some Aids to Scholarly and Critical Shakespearean Studies, Monograph Series, Studies in the Bibliography of Renaissance Dramatic Texts I, Iowa, Wm. C. Brown, 1969, pp. 199. Because Clayton is concerned only with the 147-line addition, he is able to give us a table of all the words in their Elizabethan spelling listed under their modern spelling. Thus underfour we findfower, grant/graunt, installs/enstalls, imagine/ymagin, noise/noyce, silence/scilens, etc. The regular concordance to the full lines is in modern English, but by cross-checking we can eaily find where the unusual spellings are. Clayton also separates all homographic words into their parts of speech. This commendable work has other virtues, perhaps only possible in a short concordance, but certainly adaptable in a longer one.
For example, anothernon-erroneous error occurs in Herbert S. Donow'sConcordance to the Sonnet Sequences of Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Spenser. Under the wordwit we find the line from Shakespeare's Sonnet 23, line 14: “To heare wit eies belongs to loves fine wiht.” Obviously the third word should bewith, yet the line is repeated twice in theConcordance to showtwo uses of the wordwit. It would seem from the spelling of the last word that a proofreader may have discovered the missing “h” and yelled to some young devil to put one on the wordwit. He mistakenly put it into the second occurrence of the word and in the wrong place, before the “t”. Such corrections should have been made by the editor. Later, using the already generatedConcordance Donow wrote an article (“Linear Word Count as a Function of Rhythm: An Analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnets,”Hephaistos I:1(1970), 1–27, analyzing sonnet rhythm and noting the use of Monosyllabic Function Words (MFW). In the line already cited he points out only two MFW's, the two “to's.” However, since the “wit” is a misprint forwith this line should have been recorded among the lines with three MFW's, rather than among those with 2 MFW's. There is no great tragedy here, but it again illustrates a point: the eye and the mind and the computer must work together.
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This review was originally intended to cover only the four volumes of theOxford Shakespeare Concordances, Taming of the Shrew (Oxford University Press, 1969),The Comedy of Errors (Oxford University Press, 1969),As You Like It (Oxford University Press, 1970), andAll's Well That Ends Well (Oxford University Press, 1970). References to the Marvin Spevack and Herbert Donow concordances became necessary for comparative purposes. For specific reviews of the last two, along with further comments on theOSC see “New Shakespeare Concordances,”The Shakespeare Newsletter XX, 1 (Feb. 1970), 8–10, and XXI, 1 (Feb. 1971), 2.
His Exits and Entrances: The Story of Shakespeare's Reputation(Philadelphia, 1963), and the editor of The Shakespeare Newsletter.
He is the author of Internal Evidence and Elizabethan Dramatic Authorship(Northwestern University Press, 1966) and Shakespeare's Lives(New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).
His own computer research has included preparation of a computerized bibliography on music theory and investigation of certain principles of figured bass.
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Marder, L., Schoenbaum, S., Rothgeb, J. et al. Reviews. Comput Hum 6, 49–58 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02402326
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02402326