TY - JOUR

T1 - Did Shakespeare Write Double Falsehood? Identifying Individuals by Creating Psychological Signatures With Text Analysis

AU - Boyd, Ryan L.

AU - Pennebaker, James W.

PY - 2015/5/8

Y1 - 2015/5/8

N2 - More than 100 years after Shakespeare’s death, Lewis Theobald published Double Falsehood, a play supposedly sourced from a lost play by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Since its release, scholars have attempted to determine its true authorship. Using new approaches to language and psychological analysis, we examined Double Falsehood and the works of Theobald, Shakespeare, and Fletcher. Specifically, we created a psychological signature from each author’s language and statistically compared the features of each signature with those of Double Falsehood’s signature. Multiple analytic approaches converged in suggesting that Double Falsehood’s psychological style and content architecture predominantly resemble those of Shakespeare, showing some similarity with Fletcher’s signature and only traces of Theobald’s. Closer inspection revealed that Shakespeare’s influence is most apparent early in the play, whereas Fletcher’s is most apparent in later acts. Double Falsehood has a psychological signature consistent with that expected to be present in the long-lost play The History of Cardenio, cowritten by Shakespeare and Fletcher.

AB - More than 100 years after Shakespeare’s death, Lewis Theobald published Double Falsehood, a play supposedly sourced from a lost play by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Since its release, scholars have attempted to determine its true authorship. Using new approaches to language and psychological analysis, we examined Double Falsehood and the works of Theobald, Shakespeare, and Fletcher. Specifically, we created a psychological signature from each author’s language and statistically compared the features of each signature with those of Double Falsehood’s signature. Multiple analytic approaches converged in suggesting that Double Falsehood’s psychological style and content architecture predominantly resemble those of Shakespeare, showing some similarity with Fletcher’s signature and only traces of Theobald’s. Closer inspection revealed that Shakespeare’s influence is most apparent early in the play, whereas Fletcher’s is most apparent in later acts. Double Falsehood has a psychological signature consistent with that expected to be present in the long-lost play The History of Cardenio, cowritten by Shakespeare and Fletcher.

KW - cognitive complexity

KW - individual differences

KW - language

KW - LIWC

KW - personality

KW - thinking

U2 - 10.1177/0956797614566658

DO - 10.1177/0956797614566658

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 25854277

AN - SCOPUS:84930589584

VL - 26

SP - 570

EP - 582

JO - Psychological Science

JF - Psychological Science

SN - 0956-7976

IS - 5

ER -