Posted on 10/21/2026 6:13:49 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Edward III did not appear in the 1623 first folio collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Loughnane edited it for the 2016 New Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Works, acknowledging that a couple of scenes had probably been written by him, and the play had also appeared in a 2005 volume. Loughnane also co-authored the Canon and Chronology study in the New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion, which made the case for Shakespeare’s part-authorship...
Rather than attributing particular lines to either author, the study focused on linguistic features and the distribution of certain “marker” words, such as “martial”, which are typically present in Marlowe’s plays and correspondingly atypical in the plays of other dramatists. They also suggest Shakespeare’s authorship of segments, “which may overlap with bits of writing he did not do”, and Marlowe’s authorship of other segments.
The analysis confirms that a speech from the beginning of scene 13 was written by Shakespeare, when a sudden and ominous darkening of the sky causes fear in the French camp, and King Jean says: “A sudden darkness hath defaced the sky …”
The analysis concludes that a speech from the final scene of the play was written by Marlowe: “Great servitor to bloody Mars in arms, / The Frenchman’s terror and his country’s fame.”
...
The researchers used various forms of computerised linguistic analysis in comparing Edward III with securely attributed works by 10 dramatists active between the late 1580s and the mid-1590s. In one test, 23 segments – “the lion’s share” – were identified as being written by Shakespeare, while nine segments were classified as Marlowe, whose works include Doctor Faustus.
Loughnane said these findings were particularly significant because a 2016 study had found that Marlowe was a co-author of Shakespeare’s three Henry VI plays:
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
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I’m glad that’s settled. Now I can sleep at night...................
They should fire all these scholars and train all the students to be plumbers instead. I can’t believe our tax money is being spent on this nonsense!
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it!...............
I thought Shakespeare was a Black African female according to some recent “scholars”
The Muppet Show, many, many years ago, was good corny fun. I remember a segment where Kermit tried to engage Miss Piggy in a debate on the topic “Is Shakespeare Bacon?” Good times
😀
That’s my Mac!
MacDonald P. Jackson is a prominent New Zealand scholar whose stylometric research played a key role in the 2016 New Oxford Shakespeare project. His computer-aided attribution analysis helped substantiate co-authorship claims for plays like the Henry VI series and Pericles. You can read more about his work on Wikipedia or explore his publications via Oxford University Press.
That was after Mac cutaway to work on Night Before Christmas. Good memories. Fun stuff. He was very pleased with the Shakespeare work.
I don’t think research into one of the greatest authors of western civilization is nonsense. Shakespeare created many of the English words in our vocabulary and many of the axioms and phrases we still use can be traced to him.
You’re free to think plumbing is superior to literature but I prefer a culture with both.
Both are important.
“An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
― John W. Gardner, Excellence
tags: philosophy
“I don’t think research into one of the greatest authors of western civilization is nonsense”
Sorry, I was just summarizing where this thread will go on FR before it even gets started. Neglected to put the sarcasm tag though
Anti-intellectualism on this forum is out of control these days.
Agreed.
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