Francis Bacon's Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method

Francis Bacon's Contribution to Shakespeare challenges the single-author theory of Shakespeare's work and proposes a many-hands theory. It argues that Shakespeares First Folio is unreliable for attribution and that Shakspere was an opportunist businessman. It introduces a new Rare Collocation Profiling (RCP) method to detect multiple contributors to a text, using the Early English Books Online database. The method provides evidence on important questions such as the author of the Groats-worth of Witte letter, the identifiable hands in 3 Henry VI, Francis Bacon's contribution to Twelfth Night and The Tempest, and the scheduling of Loves Labours Lost at the 1594–5 Grays Inn Christmas revels.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 310 pages
\n Publication date: 06 February 2019
\n Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
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Francis Bacon's Contribution to Shakespeare advocates a paradigm shift away from a single-author theory of the Shakespeare work towards a many-hands theory. Here, the middle ground is adopted between competing so-called Stratfordian and alternative single-author conspiracy theories. In the process, arguments are advanced as to why Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) presents as an unreliable document for attribution, and why contemporary opinion characterized Shakspere [his baptised name] as an opportunist businessman who acquired the work of others. Current methods of authorship attribution are critiqued, and an entirely new Rare Collocation Profiling (RCP) method is introduced, which, unlike current stylometric methods, is capable of detecting multiple contributors to a text. Using the Early English Books Online database, rare phrases and collocations in a target text are identified together with the authors who used them. This allows a DNA-type profile to be constructed for the possible contributors to a text that also takes into account of influence. The method brings powerful new evidence to bear on crucial questions such as the author of the Groats-worth of Witte (1592) letter, the identifiable hands in 3 Henry VI, the extent of Francis Bacon's contribution to Twelfth Night and The Tempest, and the scheduling of Loves Labours Lost at the 1594–5 Grays Inn Christmas revels for which Bacon wrote entertainments. The treatise also provides detailed analyses of the nature of the complaint against Shakspere in the Groats-worth letter, the identity of the players who performed The Comedy of Errors at Grays Inn in 1594, and the reasons why Shakspere could not have had access to Virginia colony information that appears in The Tempest. With a Foreword by Sir Mark Rylan.

\n Weight: 490g\n
Dimension: 232 x 162 x 20 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780367225445\n \n