Pater Familias

PLAYWRIGHTS AND STATISTICS. A difficulty confronting the statistical analysts of Shakespeare’s plays is that they reach different conclusions. Lukas Erne in his review summarizes the findings of contemporary scholars about Henry VI, Part I.

Gary Taylor: Part I is by Shakespeare, Thomas Nashe and two unknown collaborators. Brian Vickers: It’s by Shakespeare, Nashe and Thomas Kyd. Hugh Craig and Arthur Kinney: It’s by Shakespeare, Nashe (perhaps) and Christopher Marlowe.

I posted here on Richard Feynman’s explanation of how difficult it is to design statistical experiments. As I posted here, “Nature doesn’t run very good experiments.” It looks like Elizabethan dramatists didn’t either.

FIGURING OUT WHO SHAKESPEARE’S COLLABORATORS WERE. How do scholars determine that Shakespeare had collaborators on a play? One current way is by statistical analysis. Lukas Erne in the Times Literary Supplement (June 4, 2010) writes about the “growing consensus…that Shakespeare repeatedly collaborated with other dramatists….” He was reviewing SHAKESPEARE, COMPUTERS, AND THE MYSTERY OF AUTHORSHIP, edited by Hugh Craig and Arthur F. Kinney. A typical computer analysis is based on word frequency. The study looks at a segment of a play whose authorship is contested and sees whether it contains an above average number of words that Shakespeare used frequently. The word frequency in the segment may instead reflect that of another playwright. Interestingly, the word that Shakespeare used least, compared with contemporary dramatists, is “Yes.” He tended to use “yea” or “aye” instead. The word Shakespeare used most, compared with his peers, is “gentle.”

HOW RAFFISH WAS SHAKESPEARE? I mentioned what I had read about George Wilkins, the brothelkeeper and collaborator with Shakespeare, to a friend of Nick’s who has acted in Pericles. He smiled and said something about how that was consistent with how he thought of Shakespeare. I was surprised. I have always thought of Shakespeare as a respected bourgeois citizen of Stratford.

SHAKESPEARE’S LOW-LIFE COLLABORATOR. Charles Nicholl wrote a book, THE LODGER: SHAKESPEARE ON SILVER STREET, about Shakespeare’s testimony in a court case involving his landlord. Nicholl has an article in the London Review of Books (June 24, 2010) which contains new information about the landlord. What struck me, however, was the information about George Wilkins, who is thought to have collaborated with Shakespeare on Pericles. (Marjorie Garber says: “It seems clear from internal evidence that most of the first two acts of Pericles were written by someone else, probably George Wilkins….”) Nicholl’s article refers to George Wilkins as a “hack author and brothelkeeper” and says that “Wilkins frequently appeared before the Middlesex magistrates, sometimes on charges of gross violence against the prostitutes who worked for him.” Despite the expertise of Wilkins, Marjorie Garber says that the brothel scenes in Pericles are surely by Shakespeare.”

A HORSE ON A TREADMILL. The Bridge Project, founded by Sam Mendes, has been bringing Shakespeare and Chekhov to audiences around the world for the past two years. An article about the company in the weekend Financial Times (June 18/June 19) included comments by one actor abut the differences in audiences. The German audiences, he thought, were “unnervingly polite”—no laughing, no coughing, no shuffling. On the other hand, “In Paris and Madrid they were so exuberant….” I mentioned this to Mary Jane, and she said that she had been to a play in France once, but that her experience was different. It was a performance of Cyrano at the Theatre Mogador that she found very exciting, but there was little response from the audience until a scene where there was a horse moving forward on a treadmill. The audience went crazy about the horse.