Style and chronology: A stylometric investigation of Aphra Behn’s dramatic style and the dating of The Young King

Mel Evans

doi:10.1177/0963947018772505

Abstract

Aphra Behn’s dramatic outputs are recognized for their diversity and responsiveness to trends in Restoration drama. A stylometric approach is used to investigate the linguistic dimension of Behn’s dramatic style, with a particular focus on evidence of chronological change. Quantitative analysis (most frequent words, function words, zeta) suggests that Behn’s drama falls into three periods. A qualitative analysis indicates that the periodization may reflect a change in the construction of Behn’s dramatic worlds, from an abstract psychological focus to a more grounded, interactive and social representation. The study considers the problematic dating of Behn’s tragi-comedy The Young King. Although critical opinion holds that this play was the first that Behn wrote (i.e. pre-1670), the stylometric analysis suggests that Behn heavily revised, or, indeed, penned, the drama in the mid-to-late 1670s, mid-way through her writing career. The paper demonstrates the potential for stylochronometric techniques to complement other linguistic approaches to style, and enhance our understanding of how literary writing evolves.

Highlights

In 1682, Aphra Behn’s tragi-comedy The Young King was published; the thirteenth of her sixteen plays
The preface to The Young King suggests that Aphra Behn believed that changes in authorial style were possible, but readily perceptible
Using the most frequent function words in the dataset (MF-FWs) data, which includes 133 function words extracted from the 300 most frequent words (MFWs) wordlist, the cluster analysis (Figure 1) produces three groups of plays that are interpretable as chronologically-organised sets

Summary

Introduction

In 1682, Aphra Behn’s tragi-comedy The Young King was published; the thirteenth of her sixteen plays. For English, most frequent function words (e.g. in, and, to), most frequent words (function and content words combined), mid-range frequency words (known as zeta; see below and Burrows 2007), and the most frequent 2- and 3-grams have proved effective These linguistic markers are relatively distinct from contextual factors, such as topic, and occur sufficiently frequently across different writings by the same author). As one of the first English women to have her works performed on the London stage, Aphra Behn occupies a significant place in English literary heritage. Her dramatic writing spans a twenty-year period, 1670-1690, encompassing sixteen plays. The findings of the present study will assist in the future verification of their authorship attribution

Methods

Results

Conclusion