2 Henry VI and the Ashford Cage

A long-standing argument that Christopher Marlowe wrote the Jack Cade scenes of Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 2 is bolstered by evidence of specific knowledge of Ashford in Kent

Function Word Adjacency Networks and Early Modern Plays

The Word Adjacency Network method underpinning the New Oxford Shakespeare’s attribution of the Henry VI plays to Christopher Marlowe as co-author has not been independently tested and is only now being subjected to critiques. The response of Segarra et al. (2019) to criticism by Pervez Rizvi (2018) barely alleviates concerns. This article demonstrates that sections of the plays designated as Shakespeare’s were not detected as Shakespeare’s by the method according to the authors’ own definitions, since his “relative entropy” score was often above zero, which according to Segarra et al. (2016) means the play is no more like Shakespeare’s style than it is like the combined style of all six playwrights tested. The disproportionate representation of Shakespeare in the underlying dataset, combined with a mathematical procedure intended to remove “background noise” may explain Shakespeare’s hovering around the zero line. A claimed concordance with the results of other stylometric tests giving parts of 1 Henry VI to Marlowe is demonstrably not present. The high success rates claimed for the method in Eisen at al. (2018) are based on a flawed validation process known as overfitting, an interpretive method altered to improve success percentages, and the effects of disparate canon sizes for which the equations fail to adequately compensate. It is argued that in the light of potential flaws in the method, and the authors’ misrepresentation of their results, the conclusions of both Segarra et al.’s 2016 article and Eisen et al.’s 2018 study should be set aside

Shakespeare and Warwickshire Dialect Claims

Long-standing claims that Shakespeare used Warwickshire dialect words and phrases have been shown to be false. This article addresses four additional claims made by Jonathan Bate in a live debate on 21 September 2017: keech, cradlecloth, dowle and dey

'Tongue-tied by authority': Shakespeare Silenced

Keynote given at the British Council's 'Shakespeare Lives' conference at Yasar University in Izmir, Turkey, 2016

Christopher Marlowe and Gervase Markham

Explores the evidence for a personal friendship between Christopher Marlowe and Gervase Markham

Shakespeare's 'Honey-Stalks'

A reference to 'honey-stalks' in Titus Andronicus has been glossed as Warwickshire dialect for white clover by Shakespeare's editors since the 18th century, but evidence from husbandry books of the period suggest it is a compound nonce word for vegetation saturated with honey dew

Shakespeare and Warwickshire Dialect

The article investigates whether Shakespeare used Warwickshire, Cotswold or Midlands dialect, focusing on the sources of recent claims by Bate, Kathman and Wood, most of which derive from early dialect dictionaries compiled by 18th and 19th century antiquarians. It determines that all of these claims – frequently used as a defence against the Shakespeare authorship question – fall into four categories: those based on errors of fact, well-known or widely-used words, poetic inventions, and those derived through circular reasoning. Two problems are identified. Firstly, the source texts on which these dialect claims rest were written two- to three-hundred years after the plays, by which time language-use would not only have evolved, but would have been influenced by Shakespeare. Secondly, the continuing academic taboo surrounding the authorship question has meant that these claims, though easily refuted by searching the Oxford English Dictionary and the digitized texts of Early English Books Online, have gone unchallenged in academia. It demonstrates that querying the validity of arguments derived from an assumed biography can — without in any way disproving that the man from Stratford wrote the body of works we call ‘Shakespeare’ — lead to a better understanding of the way Shakespeare actually used language, and the meanings he intended

Photodynamic Therapy for the Treatment of Complex Anal Fistula

Background and objectives: To validate and analyze the results of intralesional photodynamic therapy in the treatment of complex anal fistula. Study design/materials and methods: This prospective multicentric observational study enrolled patients treated for complex anal fistula who underwent intralesional photodynamic therapy (i-PDT). The included patients were treated from January 2016 to December 2018 with a minimum follow-up of 1 year to evaluate recurrence, continence and postoperative morbidity. Intralesional 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) gel (2%) was injected directly into the fistula. The internal and external orifices were closed. After an incubation period of 2 hours, the fistula was irradiated using an optical fiber connected to a red laser (Multidiode 630 PDT) operating at 1 W/cm for 3 minutes (180 J). Results: In total, 49 patients were included (61.2% male). The mean age was 48 years, and the mean duration of fistula was 13 months. Of the fistulas included, 75.5% were medium transphincteric, and 24.5% were high transphincteric. The median fistula length was 4 ± 1,14 cm (range: 3-5). A total of 41 patients (83.7%) had a previous history of fistula surgery. Preoperatively, some degree of anal incontinence was found in 5 patients (10.2%). No center reported any other procedure-related complications intraoperatively. Phototoxicity was found in one patient. In the first 48 hours after the procedure, fever was reported in 2 patients (4%). At the end of follow-up, total healing was observed in 32/49 patients (65.3%). No patient reported new incontinence postoperatively. Conclusion: i-PDT could be considered a good choice in patients with complex anal fistulas to avoid surgery and its complications. Lasers Surg. Med. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Smart Cities: Towards a New Citizenship Regime? A Discourse Analysis of the British Smart City Standard

Growing practice interest in smart cities has led to calls for a less technology-oriented and more citizen-centric approach. In response, this articles investigates the citizenship mode promulgated by the smart city standard of the British Standards Institution. The analysis uses the concept of citizenship regime and a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to discern key discursive frames defining the smart city and the particular citizenship dimensions brought into play. The results confirm an explicit citizenship rationale guiding the smart city (standard), although this displays some substantive shortcomings and contradictions. The article concludes with recommendations for both further theory and practice development