{"id":32,"date":"2021-04-23T05:52:35","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T05:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamesshirley.webspace.durham.ac.uk\/?page_id=32"},"modified":"2021-05-07T22:00:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T22:00:13","slug":"stylometric-tests","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jamesshirley.webspace.durham.ac.uk\/?page_id=32","title":{"rendered":"Stylometric tests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stylometric tests
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Shirley\u2019s Revision of George Chapman\u2019s The Tragedie of Chabot Admirall of France<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Tragedie of Chabot Admirall of France<\/em> was an old play, written probably after 1611, but licensed much later, on 29 April 1635. It was entered in the Stationers\u2019 Register on 24 Oct 1638 together with Shirley\u2019s The Ball<\/em> and hence perhaps erroneously attributed to Shirley. It was published in quarto in 1639 by Thomas Cotes for Andrew Crooke and William Cooke (who were also Shirley\u2019s publishers). The title-page announced the work as \u201cwritten by George Chapman, and James Shirly\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapman uses contracted forms in comedies but rarely in tragedies, while Shirley does so throughout his work. Passages attributed to Shirley are: IV.1 (1-120: Both Queen and wife plead with the King for Chabot); V.1 (Chabot is admitted to the king\u2019s grace again); V.3 (Chabot dies onstage in the presence of the court, which gives rise to some pathos). G. E.  Bentley and Blakemore Evans think that the wife\u2019s and Queen\u2019s roles have been extended by Shirley, who may also have tried to break up the Proctor-General\u2019s very long speech (III.2, 89-143).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the current state of research see The Plays of George Chapman: The Tragedies with Sir Gyles Goosecappe: A Critical Edition<\/em>, gen. ed. Allan Holaday, assisted by G. Blakemore Evans and Thomas L. Berger (Cambridge: Brewer, 1987). See also Cyrus Hoy\u2019s study of contracted forms in Shirley and Chapman: \u2018The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (VI)\u2019, SB<\/em>, XIV (19661), 61-63; \u2018The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (IV)\u2019, SB<\/em>, XII (1959), 109-10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In G. Blakemore Evans\u2019s view, the extent of Shirley\u2019s revision is \u2018impossible to determine’; yet project research has added some further evidence of Shirley\u2019s involvement. In 2012, Dr Marcus Dahl applied the Craig-Zeta-Hoover method to discriminate Shirley\u2019s vocabulary from Chapman\u2019s. 500 index words and word clusters from the Shirley and Chapman canon were used for comparison. The graph shows that the segments of Chabot<\/em> are tightly grouped and lie distinctly in the Shirley group of segments. This suggests that the text has more in common with the general vocabulary of Shirley than that of Chapman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

download Chabot graph here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please credit Dr Marcus Dahl when you use this graph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One stylometric test is, of course, only approximative, and should be used in combination with other analytical tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B.R.<\/p>\n\n\n