Reconsidering a Lexical Test of Arden of Faversham: A Response to a Critique

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article is a response to a critique by Pervez Rizvi of an essay of mine entitled “A Supplementary Lexical Test for Arden of Faversham”, which employed a few high-quality lexical markers that are used much more often, or much less often, by Shakespeare than by a large control group of early modern dramatists, to support the view that Shakespeare was largely responsible for the central act of Arden. Rizvi drew on my essay to make certain sound points, notably that results for mere acts or groups of scenes cannot validly be mixed with results for whole plays, and that when one relies on only a small number of marker words the outcome can turn on the presence or absence of only one or two instances. Rizvi divided plays into 4657-word segments – the same length as Arden of Faversham, 4–9 – and noted that, when my method was applied to them, some Shakespeare segments yielded very low scores and some non-Shakespeare segments yielded very high scores. My response aims to counter some of Rizvi’s strictures, clarify my assumptions and procedures, and show that the new data that he has generously supplied strengthen, rather than weaken, my original argument.