[OnyxCougar]

This just in... I'm not making this up..

MONKEYS TYPE SHAKESPEARE PLAY


The classic puzzle about whether an infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite period of time would type a Shakespeare play has been answered in the affirmative. Researchers at the Raleigh Institute near Manchester, England, announced that the monkeys in their lab produced a perfect version of "Romeo and Juliet."

"We've been holding our breath for weeks," says Alan Ripshaw, the researcher in charge of the Monkey Project. "We knew the monkeys were getting close, but we've had a number of false starts.

"One time they got to the fourth act of Macbeth, before making a mistake. The monkeys also recently typed out a Thomas Pynchon novel, but that doesn't count."

Ripshaw says he began the project because he was intrigued with the controversy over whether Shakespeare really was the author of the plays bearing his name.

"Some scholars think Bacon was the real author," Ripshaw says. "That's when I had the thought, 'What if they were written by monkeys?'

Ripshaw assembled 5,000 monkeys and an equal number of typewriters. The monkeys were rewarded with bananas every time they filled up a page with letters.

"Ninety-nine percent of it was nonsense," Ripshaw says. "But one of the monkeys put up a blog on the Internet, and it has a big following."

But a researcher checking says the monkeys made a mistake. "In one reference, they called 'Romeo,' 'Romero.'"

Says Ripshaw, "I guess it's back to the drawing board."

-- JAKE ANDERSON

Published on: 12/09/2004