Australian data sleuths link Shakespeare to anonymous 16th-century play

Using sophisticated computer modelling, Jack Elliott and Brett Greatley-Hirsch have shown that at least five scenes in the 1592 tragedy, Arden of Faversham, were penned by the Bard.

Their work builds on analog methods of Shakespeare scholars who have long suspected the play was a collaboration involving the world's most famous playwright.

"Our machines allow us to see the texts again, through new eyes, giving us a rigorous way to determine which elements are more important than others," said Dr Elliott, a conjoint fellow at the University of Newcastle.

This digital evidence has been enough to convince the New Oxford Shakespeare editors to include the play in its latest collection of the Bard's works.

The new collection contains 44 plays, 17 of which now appear as collaborative works with authors such as Marlowe, Fletcher and Wilkins. Arden of Faversham is attributed to "Anonymous and William Shakespeare".

Dr Elliott and Dr Greatley-Hirsch analysed blocks of text from the play and used computational methods to analyse the frequency and patterns of words.

They compared these patterns to patterns within plays whose authorship was established, including works by Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, John Lyly, Thomas Nash, Thomas Lodge, George Peele and Robert Wilson, all contemporaries of Shakespeare.

Of their findings, Dr Elliott and Dr Greatley-Hirsch said: "It is impossible to reconcile the results we have found with a belief that Shakespeare had no hand in Arden of Faversham, thus the play takes its rightful place in the canon of his works."

Professor Hugh Craig, director of the centre for literary and linguistic computing at the University of Newcastle, helped develop many of the methods used to analyse literary works. He also sits on the attribution board of the New Oxford Shakespeare.

He said the computer models are used to look for how often a word is used or word patterns such as phrasing and pairing. They also help identify patterns of pronoun use and how conjunctions and prepositions are used by authors.

It is easy enough to identify the grammatical trope of Star Wars character Yoda – or rather, the grammatical trope of Yoda identify it we can. In a much more subtle way, the computer models look for structures in language that act as the literary fingerprints of an author.

However, Professor Craig said what is truly remarkable about these findings is what it tells us about the culture of the early modern theatre.

"There is a natural temptation with a towering figure like Shakespeare to imagine that they could only have worked alone. But he actually comes out of this as very much a team player," he said.

Professor Craig said that many plays of the time were written by teams, much like a writing team for a modern sit-com like Seinfeld.

"We need a play out in a few weeks. You can do this scene, come back in a week with a draft," he said.

Professor Craig said Shakespeare's early plays seem to have been more collaborative than work he did as an established writer.

Huw Griffiths, a Shakespeare scholar at the University of Sydney, said "it feels right to me" when asked about the play being attributed to Shakespeare.

Dr Griffiths, who is unconnected to the study, agreed with Professor Craig that the study helps "place the author into a dynamic collaborative culture" of the early theatre.

Arden of Faversham was first attributed to Shakespeare as far back as 1770 by Edward Jacob.

More recently, Shakespeare scholar Emeritus Professor Macdonald Jackson from Auckland University painstakingly analysed the play to show its Shakespearean provenance.

The play concerns a plot to kill Master Arden of Faversham in Kent, concocted by his wife, Alice, and her lover, Mosby. It is based on a true crime committed in 1551.

Or rather, as the original title page puts it, Faversham "was most wickedly murdered by meanes of his disloyal and wanton wife, who for the love she bare to one Mosby, hired two desperate Ruffins, Blacke-Will and Shakebag, to kill him.

"Wherein is shewed the great malice and dissimulation of a wicked woman, the unsatiable desire of filthy lust and the shamefull end of all murderers."

The play's two murderers are Blacke-Will and Shakebag. I asked if these were possibly plays on the Bard's name.

"Those names have been remarked on. However, Black Will [Blacke-Will] is named in the official account of the murder. 'Losebagg' is also named as another conspirator.

"Still, the names may well have attracted Shakespeare to the story, especially since Arden was his mother's maiden name," Professor Jackson said.

Dr Greatley-Hirsch, who is now at Leeds University, said their data analysis "independently confirms and extends Macdonald Jackson's earlier attribution of selected scenes to Shakespeare".

The methods used by the Australian scholars include: "delta method", which is a machine learning technique applied to the humanities; "random forests" methodology, a statistical technique to find distinctive marker words; and finally, "nearest shrunken centroid" technique, taken from the bioinformatics community.

Professor Jackson told Fairfax Media that there were distinctive language uses that could almost certainly only be the work of Shakespeare, particularly the famous Quarrel Scene (scene 8).

Professor Jackson points to differing uses of language in the scene in his 2006 article "Shakespeare and the Quarrel Scene", published in Shakespeare Quarterly.

Our conspirator Mosby is concerned that Alice might betray him:

Yet mistress Arden lives; but she's my self, And holy church rites makes us two but one.

Professor Jackson said while the idea of marriage making two people one is not uncommon, the way it is expressed here is very Shakespearean and reminiscent of lines that later appear in Romeo and Juliet:

For by your leaves, you shall not stay alone Till holy church incorporate two in one.

Professor Jackson also points to "repetition and playing on a particular word", with "love" very often being that word as a strong literary style of the Bard.

In Arden of Faversham, we have:

Mosby: It is not love that loves to anger love. Alice: It is not love that loves to murder love.

In a less known Shakespeare work, Venus and Adonis, Venus woos a reluctant Adonis:

My love to love is love but to disgrace it.

In Richard II the Duchess of York tells her husband

Love loving not itself, none other can.

In Two Gentlemen of Verona we find:

Lucetta: Fire that's closest kept burns most of all. Julia: They do not love that do not show their love. Lucetta: O they love least that let men know their love.

In this exchange we also find the ida of damming up a fire within will cause it to burn with greater force, Professor Jackson said. This is also in Arden of Faversham:

Mosby: Make me partaker of thy pensiveness: Fire divided burns with lesser force. Alice: But I will dam that fire in my breast Till by the force thereof my part consume, ah, Mosby!

Professor Jackson said: "Elliott and Hirsch are quite clear that their findings support my case, based on different evidence, that Shakespeare wrote the famous Quarrel Scene. Their results also confirm that neither Thomas Kyd nor Christopher Marlowe is likely to have had a significant role in the writing of Arden."

Art and science united, incorporating two in one.