Mystery of William Shakespeare's co-writer and critic solved after 433 years

University researchers have identified the true author of a scathing contemporary criticism of William Shakespeare, more than 400 years after the Bard was attacked by England's literary elites and labelled an "upstart crow" in 1592.

In a fitting act of personal betrayal for the author of 'Othello', an academic paper published in Shakespeare Quarterly has unmasked the critic as none other than his famous fellow writer and collaborator, Thomas Nashe.

Shakespeare worked with Nashe to produce his first-ever foray into historical plays, 'Henry VI: Part One,' which was first performed the same year that his colleague supposedly slandered him for his lack of a university education and provincial origins.

In the literary attack, originally thought to have been published "posthumously" by author Robert Greene, Shakespeare is derided for attempting to move from the low-class world of acting to the literary elite, describing him as "beautified with our feathers." Yet, using AI and machine learning, the Leeds researchers were able to prove that Greene was not the author of these words.

By analysing the prevalence and placement of functional words like "a" and "the," as well as the choice of more descriptive lexical words, the academics were able to identify the writing style with the more flamboyant and rich metaphorical prose of Cambridge-educated Nashe.

This makes some of the criticisms published under another man's name even more biting. Nashe blasts Shakespeare, who apparently “supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you,” where his co-writer is implying that Shakespeare is competent at ordinary speech (blank verse), but maybe not so suited to the more difficult poetic style of rhyme and metre.

Professor Andrew Hadfield of the University of Sussex and paper co-author said: "Nashe’s disparaging comments on Shakespeare in Groatsworth might be the result of a disgruntled author resenting a writer he saw as inferior having the gall to revise his work, and so mangling words that he thought would have been better left as they were.

“What we don’t know is whether Nashe was genuinely scornful of Shakespeare, dismissing him as a second-rate imitator, or whether he was stirring up controversy because it sells. Nashe liked taking on different identities in his writing and to play games about authorship, which may be what is happening here.”

Published in pamphlet form, the critiques contained within the satirical 'Groatsworth of Wit' are in fact the first record we have of anyone commenting on Shakespeare's writing for the stage, with this new discovery of Nashe as its true author revealing a great deal about how society reacted to the "upstart crow" who would become England's most lauded and famous wordsmith.

Scholars now think that Thomas Nashe worked alongside fellow writer Henry Chettle, Green's executor, to mischievously publish his elitist attack on Shakespeare in the posthumous 'Groatsworth' pamphlet.

This attitude, shown by Shakespeare's own Iago, who likely shuffled his own distaste for the Bard into a dead man's papers, reflects one of the key attitudes to his work that has plagued readers and scholars for centuries.

Born the middle-class son of a glove maker who learned basic Latin at a local grammar school, some have simply not believed that he could be the sole genius behind his universally-praised 39 plays and 154 sonnets. Some have pointed to contemporaries like Christopher Marlowe as potential contributors; however, this theory is now largely discredited and considered elitist.

But this elitism was likely the exact millieu faced by the young Bard as he attempted to make his name in Elizabethan England.

Professor Brett Greatley-Hirsch, University of Leeds School of English and one of the paper's authors said: "This discovery reshapes what we think we know about Shakespeare’s early reception and the literary rivalries of Renaissance London.

“It also highlights the power of digital tools to shed new light on longstanding literary puzzles – helping us to ask, and answer, questions that were previously out of reach. By using machine learning in this way, we are getting the computer to spot things that an ordinary human being simply can’t.”