Abstract
One of Shakespeare’s least performed plays is King John , a drama indicted by E. K. Chambers for being an ‘incoherent patchwork’. Stylometric evidence over an extended period suggests a division of authorship that sheds light on the play’s ambiguous allegiance to its eponymous hero. The play displays a distinctive cross pattern, both contextually and linguistically. A variety of methods are described here. They include the use of the relative frequency of most common words, the distribution of irregular lines (feminine endings), and the average length of all words in modern spelling. There is also a two-fold cluster analysis with R Stylo, a programme which combines variable extraction with statistical analysis in a single process. This is a promising and accessible means for independent replication. The authorship of King John is a question that can progress towards a solution with modern methods.
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