Co-Authorship in King John: Further Evidence
Thomas Merriam · Notes and Queries · 2023
In an unpublished investigation that he shared with the author in 2011, Gabriel Egan divided King John into forty equal sized blocks, each consisting of 2,000-word ‘rolling windows’. Block 1 (I.i.1–I.i.239) began with the play’s first line and proceeded in steps of 500 words to a final Block 40 (V.iv.30 to the end at V.vii.118).1 Using the WAN method of authorship discrimination,2 Egan found Blocks 5–8 (I.i.239–II.i.392) and Block 16 (III.i.39–III.i.283) resembled the dramatic writing of George Peele, while Blocks 9 and 10 (II.i.205–II.i.513) and Blocks 34–37 (IV.iii.97–V.vi.4) resembled the writing of Christopher Marlowe. The remaining twenty-nine blocks resembled Shakespeare.3 The purpose of Egan’s research was partly to confirm or refute a claim which I had made.4 Thomas Merriam has published a series of articles presenting evidence that King John was co-authored, most likely with George Peele. Because Merriam's methods are quite unlike those of the WAN approach, it would be particularly significant if our method came to the same or similar conclusions.5