The Effectiveness of the Stylometry of Function Words in Discriminating between Shakespeare and Fletcher

A number of recent successful authorship studies have relied on a statistical analysis of language features based on function words. However, stylometry has not been extensively applied to Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic questions. To determine the effectiveness of such an approach in this field, language features are studied in twenty-four plays by Shakespeare and eight by Fletcher. The goal is to develop procedures that might be used to determine the authorship of individual scenes in The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII. Homonyms, spelling variants and contracted forms in old-spelling dramatic texts present problems for a computer analysis. A program that uses a system of pre-edit codes and replacement /expansion lists was developed to prepare versions of the texts in which all forms of common words can be recognized automatically. To evaluate some procedures for determining authorship developed by A. Q. Morton and his colleagues, occurrences of 30 common collocations and 5 proportional pairs are analyzed in the texts. Within-author variation for these features is greater than had been found in previous studies. Univariate chi-square tests are shown to be of limited usefulness because of the statistical distribution of these textual features and correlation between pairs of features. The best of the collocations do not discriminate as well as most of the individual words from which they are composed. Turning to the rate of occurrence of individual words and groups of words, distinctiveness ratios and t-tests are used to select variables that best discriminate between Shakespeare and Fletcher. Variation due to date of composition and genre within the Shakespeare texts is examined. A multivariate and distributionfree discriminant analysis procedure (using kernel estimation) is introduced. The classifiers based on the best marker words and the kernel method are not greatly affected by characterization and perform well for samples as short as 500 words. When the final procedure is used to assign the 459 scenes of known authorship (containing at least 500 words)almost 112 95% are assigned to the correct author. Only two scenes are incorrectly classified, and 4.8% of the scenes cannot be assigned to either author by the procedure. When applied to individual scenes of at least 500 words in The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII, the procedure indicates that both plays are collaborations and generally supports the usual division. However, the marker words in a number of scenes often attributed to Fletcher are very much closer to Shakespeare's pattern of use. These scenes include TNK IV.iii and H8 I.iii, IV.i-ii and V.iv

The spectacle of citizenship: Halftones, print media, and constructing Americanness, 1880--1940

Advances in photography and conceptions of national identity proceeded side by side during the nineteenth century. The introduction of halftone reproductions marks the beginning of an information revolution and is an important moment not only in media history, but in studies of nineteenth and twentieth century cultural history and studies of national identity. Visual representation of differences between people and places was one means by which people identified and validated Americans\u27 belonging because photographs were infused with authority: they seemed to be truthful, to provide infallible evidence of events and of people. as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, and technological advances made the halftone process quick and inexpensive, men and women of the Gilded Age, Progressive Era, Jazz Age, and the Great Depression used photographs for visual storytelling in the pages of newspapers, books, journals, and magazines. Editors embraced the seeming realism of photography in their publications; halftones in print helped Americans see each other in new ways and themselves for the first time on a regular, mass-circulating basis.; The Spectacle of Citizenship examines how three publications and their strong-willed editors used halftones to display and distribute their views of nationhood and belonging in a period when the United States was undergoing significant changes as a consequence of industrialization, immigration, urbanization, and international military and economic crisis. Paul Kellogg, editor of Charities and the Commons, and his brood of social justice progressives used halftones to display and include/exclude immigrants, racial minorities, and workers belying reform-minded middle class Americans claims of sympathy, understanding, and acceptance and instead riddling the journal with images that construct a sense of belonging for white, middle class Americans by explicitly identifying who did and did not belong. Joseph Medill Patterson, blue-blooded founder the Daily News, took a British idea for photograph-based newspapers aimed at the working class and reinvented it as the nation\u27s first tabloid. The newspaper captured Jazz Age New York City with splashy photographs emphasizing crime, scandal, celebrity, politics, and world events and invented a vision of America rooted in popular culture, patriotism, and American values . Patterson\u27s newspaper reinforced the hegemony of white, upper and middle class Americans, but it did so with an acceptance of rapidly changing social and cultural values in the country and the recognition of the importance of the urban working class population. C.K. McClatchy, long-time editor and publisher of the Sacramento Bee, used photographs to reinforce the suffering and make morally-loaded pleas for federal help during the Great Depression, to demonstrate the success of New Deal Programs, and to recast almost all Californians, regardless of their origin, as representative of America and Americans. Yet McClatchy s inclusive vision was problematic: he remained fervently anticommunist; he continued to believe Asian Americans, particularly Japanese Americas, could not be assimilated; and he virtually ignored the plight of Mexican Americans in the pages of the Sacramento Bee during the Great Depression, despite the fact that they were a significant part of the state\u27s population.; The Spectacle of Citizenship is a study of the interplay of technology, society, and culture that offers a new understanding of how notions of national identity were understood, produced, and disseminated and consumed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study analyzes the importance innovative editors placed on visual representations while at the same time demonstrating the necessity of contemporary scholars\u27 understanding those images