Colloquial Contractions in Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, and Shakespeare as a Test of Authorship
Willard Edward Farnham · PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America · 1916
F. G. Fleay presented to the New Shakspere Society in 1874 his epoch-making paper On Metrical Tests as Applied to Dramatic Poetry. Many early investigations of authorship had been excellent, and some scholars looked askance at the utilization of cold statistics in literary criticism; but Fleay's methods, followed later by Boyle and others, have been vindicated. To Fleay and Boyle the fundamental idea of this paper, namely, that the work of the collaborating dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of Massinger and Shakespeare in the case of Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, may be tested by a consideration of colloquial contractions or elisions in words used by the authors, must acknowledge inspiration. The test will involve the use of statistical tables of colloquialisms which bear some resemblance to the metrical tables of Fleay and Boyle.