The best title for this passage is that ________.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions

Perhaps the greatest invention in history is writing. The flexibility of writing is perhaps the key to much of its power. But it may be that writing's very flexibility can be a curse as well as a blessing. A common concern with oral histories is the possibility that the truth will get distorted over time and that rumors will become truth. Written history evidences the same problem.

Throughout the centuries that writing has existed, forged documents have also existed. An ancient letter supposedly written by the Roman emperor Constantine in the 4h century A.D. shows that the duration of a document is not proof of its truth. For many centuries, the Catholic Church relied on this letter to enforce the legitimacy of its rule and its land. The letter from Constantine stated that he had become a Christian and donated a portion of his land to the Pope and to future Popes in the Catholic Church. Although it is true that Constantine converted to Christianity, the letter itself was discovered to be a forgery in the 15th century, and probably originated in the 8th century.

In addition to historical documents, great literature has also been forged. William Shakespeare, who died in 1616, is perhaps the most famous author in the world. Wouldn't someone benefit if a long-lost play was found? In 1796, William Henry Ireland announced that he had indeed found such a play entitled Vortigern. He sold it to a London theater producer, but as soon as he handed over the script, the producer immediately realized it was fake. He decided to produce it anyway as an April Fool's Day joke.

Some fake documents are easily debunked by highly literate people by comparing the suspicious document to writing that was definitely written by the author in question. If the writing style does not correspond to the known sample, it is not hard to declare the writing to be fake. However, it is not always so easy to use writing style, grammatical patterns, and word usage as a basis for identifying the real author of a of William Shakespeare.

In 1989, literature professor Don Foster identified a poem called "A Funeral Elegy" as the work of William Shakespeare. The work was added to collections of Shakespeare’s work, but in 2002 it was re- classified as the work of another writer - and Foster, now aware of his mistake, agreed.

(Adapted from Reading Explorer 5, Nancy Douglas et al., 2012)

The best title for this passage is that ________.

• A. Oral History vs. Written History
• B. Types of Record History
• C. How Do We Know If Shakespeare Wrote This?
• D. Reliability and the Written Word