Study finds a disputed Shakespeare play bears the master’s mark

Los Angeles Times:

Chalk up another one for The Bard.

“Double Falsehood,” a play said to have been written by William Shakespeare but whose authorship has been disputed for close to three centuries, is almost certainly the work of the 16th century poet and playwright, new research finds.

Shakespeare appears to have had some assistance in the project from John Fletcher, a contemporary who is thought to have co-written three plays with the Bard — including one on a theme similar to that of “Double Falsehood” — near the end of Shakespeare’s life.

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Under the supervision of University of Texas psychology professors Ryan L. Boyd and James W. Pennebaker, machines churned through 54 plays — 33 by Shakespeare, nine by Fletcher and 12 by Theobold — and tirelessly computed each play’s average sentence-length, quantified the complexity and psychological valence of its language, and sussed out the frequent use of unusual words.

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