The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy

[Swammerdami]

@ DrZoidberg — I am going to admit that I am starting to find you annoying. Almost every sentence in your latest post is wrong and condescending. (I've noticed similar posts from you in other threads.) I hope you will take this response as helpful.

@ Mods — In the following, some of my remarks directed at DrZoidberg will seem almost insulting. Please note that the post I am responding to had several insults directed at me.

Please study the STRUCTURE of this response to you, DrZoidberg. Observe that I single out brief excerpts by you and then respond to them. In future, if you want me to read your posts you should do the same. As it is, you quote my post and "respond" to it in a way that leaves me wondering what you think you're responding to, or even if you read my post at all.

I have not read the whole thread. Nor will I.

OK. You're here to teach, not to learn. Got it.

I just saw one piece of information that was incorrect ...

Precisely which piece of information was that?

... it's silly for an amateur to question something the majority of the experts agree on.

Where's the emoticon for total bafflement? The majority of experts agree Trump is a childish and incompetent sociopathic. So you agree it was silly for people to vote for him? Or perhaps even be allowed to vote for him?

And what if the "majority" is a mere 51% of "experts", with 49% opposed? Do we amateurs need to automatically bow down to the 51%??

And who the HELL determines who is or is not an "expert" on a topic like this anyway? Certainly people who have not bothered to study the cases are not experts.

People who challenge whether Shakespeare actually wrote them is[sic] a bit like conspiracy theorists. They care more about whether the clues fit together, rather than whether or not the basic question makes sense. It doesn't. There's no reason not to think he wrote them, or was the main author.

This is from a guy who, in effect, brags that he hasn't read the thread, has read few (or zero?) articles by those he calls "conspiracy theorists." Ha Ha Ha. YOU don't have any reason not to think he wrote them, because actually clicking the links — or even skimming this thread — is beneath your dignity. You already know the answer. Stand back, pretend you're not the one who wrote this (if you can), and see how utterly preposterous and condescending you appear.

What's also interesting is that it doesn't actually matter much. It's his work that people ultimately care about.

Collecting coins as a hobby doesn't matter much. It's whether they work in the candy-bar vending machine that people care about.

Can you walk and chew gum at the same time, DrZoidberg? Someone who appreciates the plays doesn't have time to wonder who wrote them? And someone who wonders who wrote them can't appreciate them?

One reason it's hard for me to find Stratfordians convincing is that many of them repeat things that are false, or don't make sense. You've hit all the buttons!

It's a bit bizarre having any strong opinions about the man himself, unless you are a Shakespeare scholar

I'm not a biologist, but I find Nick Lane's books about biology fascinating. I guess I'm bizarre.
I'm no longer a professional bridge player but I still like to play. Bizarre?
I'm not a detective, but I enjoy whodunnits. Bizarre?

But what I've learned from reading about Shakespeare skeptics is that their motivations for challenging his authorship is rarely based on any genuine interest. It's always, of what I can see, some ideological crusade or another. As if everybody wants his authorship to prove some pet theory on humanity that they're harbouring.

Wow! You totally misunderstand me. I told you that already. You repeat yourself. Do you see that you are insulting me? I explained my motives, so now you are accusing me of lying.

And what did you "read about Shakespeare skeptics"? If you want to know how those skeptics thin, read their writing, not the views of the anti-skeptics. Do you see the vicious cycle you're in? You refuse to read Oxfordians because you assme they're crackpots. And will continue to assume they're crackpots because you won't read them. You won't even skim this thread. What a joke!

Bomb#20 and others in the thread are Stratfordians. But Mr. Bomb was thoughtful enough to treat the topic with respect, and to post a link that stimulated thought and debate. You, on the other hand, want to do nothing but insult me and other Oxfordians, openly bragging that you won't even read the thread.

Your "contribution" was to mention a visit to Denmark by three actors 15 years before Hamlet was written. (Though you stated that it was just one (1) year before Hamlet was written. Ha ha ha. Your prescription that amateurs shouldn't get involved might be very good advice ... in your case.)

Assuming that the information presented in this thread is accurate. When random people on the Internet present controversial evidence that go against established scholarly views, I'm not going to look at the evidence presented.

Mr. Moogly refers, I think to my link to a paper by a Professor of Mathematics who analyzes results from a PhD in a relevant thread. These two Professors are the "random people" you insult, as you'd know if you could condescend to read the thread.

"against established scholarly views" Your ignorance makes me laugh! Out of curiosity, what is the 'Dr' in your name for?

 

[Bomb#20]

Bomb#20 and others in the thread are Stratfordians.

Hey, I don't know who wrote "Shakespeare" -- I wasn't there and I can prove it. It seems to me there's a pretty solid case that Oxford didn't write them. But does that mean the Stratford man did? That one's above my pay grade. For all I know, maybe John Heminge wrote them.

 

[DrZoidberg]

@ DrZoidberg — I am going to admit that I am starting to find you annoying. Almost every sentence in your latest post is wrong and condescending. (I've noticed similar posts from you in other threads.) I hope you will take this response as helpful.

You took my first post in this thread as me debating against you. I wasn't. I saw this more as friendly conversation and jumped in with some info. You responded with debating against me. But I wasn't debating for or against anything. While I love Shakespeare's plays, I have no horse in this race.

But the meta discussion is interesting. It's interesting to discuss why anybody cares enough about Shakespeare's authorship to get this invested in it, either way. I don't understand why any amateur can be sure enough about whether he authored it or not to pick a side.

The reasons for not believing he authored it is also interesting. Like I said before, historically it's been more about snobbery and the disbelief a commoner can be a great author. Something we today have no problem with, yet those same arguments persist, for no apparent reasons. It's like still today trying to come up with methods with which to defeat Napoleon, as if he's still ravaging Europe. Why are you fighting a battle for a side that had a weak claim to begin with?

We also know, from our knowledge of theatre in general from that period, that if he did write them he would have written them together with his cast collaboratively, and whatever other consultants would have been brought in. Which takes a lot of pressure off Shakespeare to, himself, being learned and scholarly trained. The theatre owners would also have acted producers and would have put their noses in Shakespeares work and forced him to rewrite whatever they didn't like. Just like how modern movie scripts are written. Not to mention revisions over time based on how well it played to that audience.

There's a huge panoply of people involved in helping, whoever wrote the plays, who had a part in making them what they are today. That would have been true even if Shakespeare was the one writing them. Whatever other person you try to bring forward as the author of the plays will have been in the same situation. So it's a bit weird to be so singularly obsessed about the writer as a person.

We do today have a very unhealthy artistic genius cult of our revered artists, completely ignoring the context in which these artists find themselves.

If you take painting for example. Any famous masterpiece. It's easy to think that it sprung out of nowhere. But if you look at what his friends were doing at the time they're all very similar paintings. The masterpiece painting is just one tiny notch above the rest. The rest will then disappear into history and the masterpiece will survive alone without the context further elevating the image of the artist as a singular genius standing head and shoulders above his contemporaries, when he never was.

Writing is the same.

Stephen King for example. He's very different depending on how is his editor. Mozart's arias are written for specific singers to fit within the range of what those singers could do. If he'd have different singers to work with his operas would sound completely different.

It's a shame you find me annoying. But it is what it is.

Out of curiosity, what is the 'Dr' in your name for?

Dr Zoidberg is a famous highly skilled and competent medical doctor who only rarely caused his patients great bodily harm.

 

[Swammerdami]

Pardon me Bomb#20. (Do you have a preferred nickname? What did you do to Bomb#19 anyway? )

Trying to duplicate Foster's results would be too tedious and confusing for me. (Just now I counted to find 22,000+ distinct lower-case words that occur 12 times or fewer in the plays. Some of these really are rare, but "noses," "meets" etc. appear on the list. How did or should Foster treat inflected forms?)

What would be nice to see are details of his results.* WHICH "rare" words of Hamlet's ghost were most diagnostic? What are the comparative counts? That a word will be rare until play #N, rise in frequency at #N, and rise further for plays thereafter isn't odd. It's the occurrence of a statistically significant number of rare words in the same character of play #N that needs explanation, but I'm not sure the playwright acting that role is the only explanation.

Such a detailed summary would be nice to look at. I do trust that Foster found something significant, but I'd still like to look at it with my own eyes, even though my PhD isn't in the field of Looking-at-Shakespearean-word-statistics.

Some conjecture that Oxford acted in his own plays; to pursue that would get me branded a crackpot! But if he did, the ghost, who speaks in only one scene, would be a perfect role for him, lame and middle-aged.

* - They're likely there if I Google harder. (Or I might send e-mail to Foster or his son.) Details may have been available ten years ago but are now behind a paywall. (Just yesterday I notice someone plagiarized my work, put it on scribd.com, and I have to fight scribd's paywall to see how much was plagiarized!)

 

[Bomb#20]

Pardon me Bomb#20. (Do you have a preferred nickname? What did you do to Bomb#19 anyway? )

No worries; suit yourself; and that you can even ask tells me you've never seen Dark Star. Quit wasting your time on me and run to your video store^H^H^H^Hstreaming service! (By the way, "DrZoidberg" is also the name of a sci-fi character.)

Some conjecture that Oxford acted in his own plays; to pursue that would get me branded a crackpot!

Well don't let that concern you -- just saying he wrote them already gets you branded a crackpot.

But if he did, the ghost, who speaks in only one scene, would be a perfect role for him, lame and middle-aged.

True. If Oxfordians take seriously the possibility that he acted in them, I think that gives you a better story. But it's not just Hamlet; it's play after play after play. You'd need a pretty convincing theory for how someone of his political importance could have pulled it off hundreds of times without being recognized.

(Just yesterday I notice someone plagiarized my work, put it on scribd.com, and I have to fight scribd's paywall to see how much was plagiarized!)

Ouch!

 

[Swammerdami]

Spoiler alert: After having watched the video Barber hammers stylometry as done by the authors she mentions. She is a scientist so understands the scientific method. It's a good video to watch.

Ummm... Dr. Barber has only one PhD, and it's in English Literature. Have you cleared her with our academic expert, Dr. Zoidberg?

 

[Swammerdami]

Well don't let that concern you -- just saying he wrote them already gets you branded a crackpot.

But if he did, the ghost, who speaks in only one scene, would be a perfect role for him, lame and middle-aged.

True. If Oxfordians take seriously the possibility that he acted in them, I think that gives you a better story. But it's not just Hamlet; it's play after play after play. You'd need a pretty convincing theory for how someone of his political importance could have pulled it off hundreds of times without being recognized.

It seems farfetched but I won't rule it out. In that scenario his fellow actors were presumably in on the hoax, as were many other noblemen and top dramatists. With make-up it might be quite likely he'd pass unrecognized by others. Oxford was rather reclusive by that age, and this was an age without photographs: people simply didn't know what celebrities looked like.

But I place little faith in that conjecture; for one thing Oxford didn't have spare time to do this acting. That's why I'd like to see a detailed summary of Foster's analysis: if convincing it would put a big dent in Oxford's "claim."

(Just yesterday I notice someone plagiarized my work, put it on scribd.com, and I have to fight scribd's paywall to see how much was plagiarized!)

Ouch!

My hobbyist website — which has yielded me VERY little revenue — has been plagiarized so often, I just treat that as flattery! Often they credit me as the author, or even email asking for copy permission (I always say OK.). This theft by a scribd user was annoying because Scribd wants my credit card before I can view the totality of it! Scribd will almost certainly remove the one infringing page I reported, but if they stole one page, they probably stole dozens. I'd have to track them down one-by-one with Google Search — AFAICT Scribd doesn't have a useful index — and report each specific URL separately. I probably won't bother.

(No; I won't tell you what those pages are about. except that they have zero relationship to Shakespeare or literature! For reasons unrelated to TFT I'm trying to keep the Swammi=Real_name identity private.)

 

[DrZoidberg]

Spoiler alert: After having watched the video Barber hammers stylometry as done by the authors she mentions. She is a scientist so understands the scientific method. It's a good video to watch.

Ummm... Dr. Barber has only one PhD, and it's in English Literature. Have you cleared her with our academic expert, Dr. Zoidberg?

Its funny how you are trying to make fun of me for trusting in experts.

A debate among experts is something different than an amateur taking the work of a random maverick academic and running with it.

Have you noticed how QAnon and antivaxxers have actual academics and experts on their side. Then they point at these experts as if that proves Covid-19 is a hoax. No, it doesn't.

Academics should push odd theories and hypothesis to their limit to see where they go. That's their jobs. It's stupid to come from outside and pick up one of these studies and think it disproves established academia.

That's misunderstanding what academics do all day and the point of the scientific method.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Spoiler alert: After having watched the video Barber hammers stylometry as done by the authors she mentions. She is a scientist so understands the scientific method. It's a good video to watch.

Ummm... Dr. Barber has only one PhD, and it's in English Literature. Have you cleared her with our academic expert, Dr. Zoidberg?

Sweet. Just recalling from that video I last posted that she says she is a biologist, says she knows how to do science. So maybe she is an undergrad bio major who now does Literature.

And btw, that last video is a pretty good intro to this whole gig of computational stylistics and its spinoffs. Bomb, I think you would enjoy the video. WAB, ditto. At the end she shows how similar Marlowe and Shakespeare are in these efforts, so WAB you might find it interesting.

And btw again, just because one is a non-stratfordian does not make them anything else. Obviously one can be a non-Oxfordian just the same. The case of the Stratford businessman stands on its own. One needn't decide who other authors might be but still be firmly non-Stratfordian based on evidence against Stratford.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Spoiler alert: After having watched the video Barber hammers stylometry as done by the authors she mentions. She is a scientist so understands the scientific method. It's a good video to watch.

Ummm... Dr. Barber has only one PhD, and it's in English Literature. Have you cleared her with our academic expert, Dr. Zoidberg?

Its funny how you are trying to make fun of me for trusting in experts.

A debate among experts is something different than an amateur taking the work of a random maverick academic and running with it.

Have you noticed how QAnon and antivaxxers have actual academics and experts on their side. Then they point at these experts as if that proves Covid-19 is a hoax. No, it doesn't.

Academics should push odd theories and hypothesis to their limit to see where they go. That's their jobs. It's stupid to come from outside and pick up one of these studies and think it disproves established academia.

That's misunderstanding what academics do all day and the point of the scientific method.

It is not my intention to poke fun. And you are absolutely correct that I do not trust "experts." What I trust is expert information, expert evidence. I think you can understand that. Some experts are credible because they cite the appropriate evidence. There really isn't any issue here.

 

[Bomb#20]

But I place little faith in that conjecture; for one thing Oxford didn't have spare time to do this acting.

Me neither. For one thing, the pattern continues right up through Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, which AFAIK were never performed until after Oxford's death. Of course a couple of correlations could happen by chance...

...For reasons unrelated to TFT I'm trying to keep the Swammi=Real_name identity private.)

No problem. A lot of people have good reason to write under assumed names. I do it. Most of us on TFT do it. Come to think of it, this is on-topic -- Oxford did it, according to Oxfordians. Which makes me wonder...

The weighty case against the Stratford man has never been that a guy like him couldn't have written the works, but that a guy like him couldn't have written the works without leaving a paper trail showing how he did it. So what if the Stratford man, like Oxford and so many others, had good reason to write under an assumed name? Maybe teenage Shakespeare left Stratford with a thief-taker on his heels, lived for years under an assumed name, and started acting in London under his real name only when the heat had died down. Maybe the paper trail academics can't find is right there in plain sight, just under an alias.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

No. It's not a measurement of any one play; it's a measurement of correlations across multiple plays by the same author. You couldn't apply it to Hamlet unless you had other plays the author wrote before and after Hamlet. And having actors isn't enough; the metric detects the appearance of a special statistical relationship between the author and some character in a play, a relationship that the author is observed not to have with the other characters in the same play.

So given that the statistical relationship exists, what causes it? To be the actor who personally played that character on stage in performances of the play, or not to be the actor who personally played that character on stage in performances of the play, that is the question.

I freely admit that I cannot get my head around this. If it rattles around enough, perhaps. I just don't understand what such a correlation would prove and where the idea comes from. Sure, I might find correlations but did Foster do controls? How strong was that correlation compared to other correlations? Was it a statistically significant correlation compared to those other correlations? All those questions and more, which is Swammi's point entirely.

I am vaguely familiar with statistics, control charts, scatter diagrams, histograms, and all manner of statistical tools. I'm no expert (Hello DrZoidberg) but spent quite a few years attempting to teach persons in a manufacturing environment to not chase ghosts in the data, no pun intended but it sure seems to fit here.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Spoiler alert: After having watched the video Barber hammers stylometry as done by the authors she mentions. She is a scientist so understands the scientific method. It's a good video to watch.

Ummm... Dr. Barber has only one PhD, and it's in English Literature. Have you cleared her with our academic expert, Dr. Zoidberg?

I took the time to re-listen to that video. Barber refers to herself as a "former scientist" at about 1:24 of the vid. At about 7:40 she refers to herself as "someone who's first degree was biology." So she must have some experience with the scientific arts.

 

[Swammerdami]

But I place little faith in that conjecture; for one thing Oxford didn't have spare time to do this acting.

Me neither. For one thing, the pattern continues right up through Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, which AFAIK were never performed until after Oxford's death. Of course a couple of correlations could happen by chance...


The weighty case against the Stratford man has never been that a guy like him couldn't have written the works, but that a guy like him couldn't have written the works without leaving a paper trail showing how he did it. So what if the Stratford man, like Oxford and so many others, had good reason to write under an assumed name? Maybe teenage Shakespeare left Stratford with a thief-taker on his heels, lived for years under an assumed name, and started acting in London under his real name only when the heat had died down. Maybe the paper trail academics can't find is right there in plain sight, just under an alias.

The name "Shake-speare" became well-known in London's literary circle by 1593 with the publication of Venus and Adonis, very early in his writing career according to the traditional chronology. Most of the troublesome "missing paper trail" begins from that time: there are no dedications to this great playwright, no letters to/from fellow theatrical figures, no mentions in Stratford, no eulogies, etc.

Spoiler alert: After having watched the video Barber hammers stylometry as done by the authors she mentions. She is a scientist so understands the scientific method. It's a good video to watch.

Ummm... Dr. Barber has only one PhD, and it's in English Literature. Have you cleared her with our academic expert, Dr. Zoidberg?

I took the time to re-listen to that video. Barber refers to herself as a "former scientist" at about 1:24 of the vid. At about 7:40 she refers to herself as "someone who's first degree was biology." So she must have some experience with the scientific arts.

I got my info from Wikipedia:  Ros Barber. She has a BSc in Biology, an MA in creative writing, the arts and education, and a PhD in English literature. She has worked as a computer programmer. (She has won the Marlovian Hoffman Prize three times.) The lecture you linked to wasn't easy to follow but she did seem convinced that stylometricists tend to cherry-pick ... though she may have cherry-picked to support the cherry-picking conclusion!

In one study she comments on, Jew of Malta was one of the most "Shakespearean" plays! Another study shows a clear Marlowe-Shakespeare continuum if you do what those researchers did NOT do: arrange the plays into chronological sequence.

But these are just my musings. According to Zoidberg — who knows nothing of my own academic credentials — I guess we need to wait for a third "academic" to come along and pass a verdict since two other academics are in dispute.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I got my info from Wikipedia:  Ros Barber. She has a BSc in Biology, an MA in creative writing, the arts and education, and a PhD in English literature. She has worked as a computer programmer. (She has won the Marlovian Hoffman Prize three times.) The lecture you linked to wasn't easy to follow but she did seem convinced that stylometricists tend to cherry-pick ... though she may have cherry-picked to support the cherry-picking conclusion!

In one study she comments on, Jew of Malta was one of the most "Shakespearean" plays! Another study shows a clear Marlowe-Shakespeare continuum if you do what those researchers did NOT do: arrange the plays into chronological sequence.

As I'm on a Ros Barber kick lately I thought you might enjoy this short video titled "Nine Fake Facts about Shakespeare."


[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPIKgfEWRo0[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Bomb#20]

I freely admit that I cannot get my head around this. If it rattles around enough, perhaps. I just don't understand what such a correlation would prove and where the idea comes from.

You're looking for unusual words in the plays. Let's say you find two words* that show up once each in Twelfth Night, and are rare or nonexistent in the plays earlier than Twelfth Night, but are more frequent in the subsequent plays. Going by the null-hypothesis, which Twelfth Night characters would you expect to speak those two words? Well, it could be any of them. It's random, so there's a good chance one's spoken by Viola and the other by Malvolio, or some other pairing like that: characters with lots of lines are more apt to have said them than characters with few lines; and it's likely they're spoken by two different characters. That's what we'd expect from chance. But what we observe is that both words are spoken by the same character -- and it's Antonio, a relatively minor part with a lot fewer lines than Viola or Malvolio. So that's kind of a funny coincidence. Now let's say it's not just two unusual words, but three, all spoken by Antonio. Now let's say it's not just Twelfth Night where this sort of funny coincidence happens, but twenty-five other plays as well. What we see is so improbable on its face that it cries out for an explanation.

The simplest explanation, it seems to me, is that whoever wrote the plays played Antonio on stage. So first he memorized Antonio's lines and then he recited them to audiences over and over, burning them into his memory. Later, when he was writing the subsequent plays, and he was searching for a word that would fit his meaning and scan right, all those words in Antonio's lines from Twelfth Night came to mind particularly easily.

If you reject that explanation because you think somebody who wasn't in the troupe wrote the plays, then you need some other hypothesis to explain all those improbable coincidences.

(* Disclaimer: this is only a conceptual explanation of Foster's method. I don't have his data; I don't know how many rare words he actually found in Antonio's lines.)

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If you reject that explanation because you think somebody who wasn't in the troupe wrote the plays, then you need some other hypothesis to explain all those improbable coincidences.

Thank you for taking the time and allowing me to understand the reasoning. I really appreciate that and could never have done that on my own. Now that I understand the logic I can say that I simply don't accept the reasoning as reasonable.

Why? It strikes me as reading tea leaves or as I mentioned earlier chasing ghosts in the data. I see no reason for such an explanation. My instincts tell me that the legend about the author playing "the ghost" has led to the conclusion. Further, if such an explanation is scientifically sound then we should be able to apply it to all dramas everywhere and get identical results. We would have a new tool for understanding drama of that age or any age.

But if it were to be validated on other works then I could accept it, at least provisionally. I'm curious how other participants in this thread see the situation.

 

[Swammerdami]

To test the method on another playwright, it would need to be a playwright who acted in his own plays. Examples?

If Foster's idea is correct, it can be used to order the plays' writing chronologically. And indeed he claims that this deduced ordering is the traditional chronology! But that doesn't support the actor hypothesis until one examines the role(s) who spoke the rare words during the transitional play.

It is very easy to cherry-pick in studies like this. For example, Foster sets 12 as the threshold for a word to be rare. What if he'd picked 10 as the threshold? Or 14? Studying Foster's results might be inconclusive unless we repeat his experiments with different threshold settings. In fact, such cherry-picking (often not deliberate) is rather common in scientific studies!

Once the software apparatus was in place for Foster to do his study, it should have been trivial for him to repeat the study with different thresholds. I would look with disfavor if he DIDN'T do that and didn't show results for different parameters.

I am NOT accusing Foster of cherry-picking, or making other deliberate errors; he is probably quite honest. His connecting the emergence of new words to the author as actor seems like a rather clever idea! But I won't take his results seriously until I see something more than vague summaries. (Better results may be just an e-mail away, but I've got other things on my mind.)

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I am NOT accusing Foster of cherry-picking, or making other deliberate errors; he is probably quite honest. His connecting the emergence of new words to the author as actor seems like a rather clever idea! But I won't take his results seriously until I see something more than vague summaries. (Better results may be just an e-mail away, but I've got other things on my mind.)

How is it meaningful? That's where I'm stuck. What makes it a clever idea? A clever idea to demonstrate what?

I'm with you that Foster isn't being deceitful so he is obviously trying to make a case for something. Is that "something" simply the belief that the author was also the ghost? If that's the something then I understand.

ETA. Right. For such an analysis to make sense we have to assume that the author acted in his own plays. Why would we also assume the author would act the part with certain words?

 

[WAB]

To test the method on another playwright, it would need to be a playwright who acted in his own plays. Examples?

If Foster's idea is correct, it can be used to order the plays' writing chronologically. And indeed he claims that this deduced ordering is the traditional chronology! But that doesn't support the actor hypothesis until one examines the role(s) who spoke the rare words during the transitional play.

It is very easy to cherry-pick in studies like this. For example, Foster sets 12 as the threshold for a word to be rare. What if he'd picked 10 as the threshold? Or 14? Studying Foster's results might be inconclusive unless we repeat his experiments with different threshold settings. In fact, such cherry-picking (often not deliberate) is rather common in scientific studies!

Once the software apparatus was in place for Foster to do his study, it should have been trivial for him to repeat the study with different thresholds. I would look with disfavor if he DIDN'T do that and didn't show results for different parameters.

I am NOT accusing Foster of cherry-picking, or making other deliberate errors; he is probably quite honest. His connecting the emergence of new words to the author as actor seems like a rather clever idea! But I won't take his results seriously until I see something more than vague summaries. (Better results may be just an e-mail away, but I've got other things on my mind.)

One could put Woody Allen's screenplays to the same test. Woody almost always acted in his own films. Problem is, he wasn't a poet, and wrote realistic dialogue, not the extravagant poetic speech we read in the Elizabethan dramatists.