George Wilkins and the First Two Acts of Pericles: New Evidence from Function Words
MACD. P. JACKSON · Literary and Linguistic Computing · 1991
A Summary of M. W. A. Smith's computer-aided attempts to resolve the problem of the authorship of acts 1 and 2 of Pericles is followed by a report on a complementary statistical analysis of function-word data previously gathered for a study of the canon of dramatist Thomas Middleton Chi-square tests compare samples of 1,000 consecutive instances of thirteen high-frequency words in 112 plays by twenty playwrights with figures for Pericles, i–ii and Pericles, iii–v Samples by George Wilkins most closely match Pericles, i–ii, while samples by William Shakespeare most closely match Pericles, iii–v. The results are interpreted as supporting the theory, favoured by Smith, that Wilkins is more likely than Shakespeare to have written most of the first two acts of Pericles.