A Phrasal Collocation
Thomas Merriam · Notes and Queries · 2014
CHARLES R. FORKER includes in his edition of The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England an Appendix 2 which lists 219 instances of three or more consecutive words in that play which uniquely match 244 comparable word strings in plays attributed to George Peele—out of a corpus of seventy extant plays believed to have been performed before 1596.1 It should be noted that the electronic database of seventy contemporary plays is less inclusive than the Chadwyck-Healey Literature On Line or Early English Books Online. These include prose works and poems. The author of Troublesome Reign obviously read works other than drama, some of which may contain consecutive words or phrasal collocations that are unique only within the corpus of the seventy dramas consulted by Sir Brian Vickers. Even with the Chadwyck-Healey databases, claims of uniqueness have to be regarded with caution in light of texts which have vanished in the course of time, the ‘dark matter’ of literature.