The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 28.288  Monday, 13 November 2017

 

From:        Hartmut Ilsemann <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         November 10, 2017 at 4:50:56 AM EST

Subject:    "Shakespeare Statistics"

 

The web page “Shakespeare Statistics” <http://www.shak-stat.engsem.uni-hannover.de/> might attract your attention. Originally it was devoted to statistics concerning the dramatis personae and the structure of Shakespeare plays, but ever since rolling delta and rolling classify became available in 2013 the site records authorship analyses that had been carried out with these new stylometric tools of R Stylo.

 

When I looked into the context of the Michael Egan/MacDonald P. Jackson debate on Thomas of Woodstock on your site I became aware that the new results are a step forward in the determination of authorship questions. According to rolling delta Woodstock is a collaboration of Rowley and Shakespeare <http://www.shak-stat.engsem.uni-hannover.de/eauthorthwoodstock.html>. A preliminary thesis would give it a rather early date (not 17th century as Jackson believes), but Shakespeare. may have revised it later. Traditional stylometry seems to rely heavily on averages covering the whole corpus of one author, and results are achieved by comparing strong discriminators. Rolling delta uses a huge number of weak discriminators but is statistically sound and able to return collaborations.

 

Yours sincerely

Hartmut Ilsemann

 

 

 

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