TABLE 1 Feminine endings

  Scene/line [Act/scene/line]* Verse lines Feminine endings minimum % feminine endings minimum Monosyllabic feminine endings

  15 [4.7] 34 6 17.6

  2c = 2.350–625 275 36 13.2 4

  [2.1.184–459]

  14, 15, 16 [4.6–8] 61 8 13.1

  3 [2.2] 204 25 12.3 4

  16 [4.8] 10 1 10

  12 [4.4] 159 15 9.4 5

  11 [4.3] 85 7 8.24 2

  9 [4.1] 42 3 7.1 1

  13 [4.5] 122 8 6.6 1

  2a = 2.1–166 [1.2] 166 11 6.6 1

  2b = 2.167–349

  [2.1.1–183] 175 11 6.3 1

  14 [4.6] 17 1 5.88

  10 [4.2] 85 4 4.71

  17 [4.9] 64 3 4.69

  5 [3.2] 74 3 4.1

  1 [1.1] 168 4 2.4

  8 [3.5] 107 2 1.9

  7, 8 [3.4–5] 120 2 1.7

  18 [5.1] 242 4 1.7

  4 [3.1] 184 3 1.6

  6 [3.3] 227 3 1.3

  7 [3.4] 13

  *Cam counts a supposedly missing line after 2.1.105, which is not taken account of in the alternative line numbering here.

  Monosyllabic feminine endings in Edward III total nineteen, the most frequent occurrences being in Scs 2c, 3 and 12. While both Kyd and Marlowe make use of such forms, Nashe offers none, unless the nine in Act 1 of 1 Henry VI are his (see, e.g., Taylor). Shakespeare alone uses them with any freedom, and does so with increasing frequency in the mid-1590s. Of the plays compared, the relevant scenes of Edward III, in their total of monosyllabic feminine endings, most nearly match the whole of 1 Henry VI (16). The totals for Marlowe’s Edward II (13), and for Kyd’s Soliman and Perseda (19) and Cornelia (15), also relate to the whole texts.48

  The top section of the table is completed by the composite scene, 14–16, which dramatizes the battle of Poitiers. Of all the historical scenes in the play these have least connection with chronicle sources; indeed, the whole portrayal of Poitiers derives as much from earlier scenes of Edward III itself as from any narrative, even that of Froissart (though the crucial stone-throwing comes from Holinshed). The passport story has its origins solely in Froissart (Ch. 135), and is linked by theme and phrase with the passages involving Warwick in Sc. 2c. The four later monosyllabic feminine endings all fall within the passport sections of the scenes in question, at 9.33, 11.15, 20 and 13.73, thus seeming to strengthen the possibility of a connection with Sc. 2c, and, by association, with Shakespeare. Earlier in the play short sections of Scs 1 and 2a involving Warwick can be identified as insertions subsequent to initial composition. It also seems likely that the military dispositions made at the end of Sc. 3 (200–3, 206–7) may not be of continuous common authorship with the dialogue of King and Countess that immediately precedes them.

  Table 2 indicates in what contexts the monosyllabic feminine endings occur: in the final dialogue before the undignified flight of the Scots (2.61, 210); between the King’s soliloquy after the refusal of the Countess to hear his plea and the end of Sc. 2 (455, 463, 519, 557); in speeches of both King and Countess in Sc. 3 (48, 159, 163, 167), especially at the climax of their confrontation; in Salisbury’s request to Villiers to obtain a passport from Charles, Duke of Normandy (9.33); in speeches of Charles to Villiers (11.15, 20) and to his father (13.73); in Prince Edward’s response to the herald from Charles (12.95, 99) and his comment on the French to Audley (12.124); and in Audley’s speech on death (12.141, 143).

  The high percentage of feminine endings groups together Scs 3 and 12, the last long section of Sc. 2 and Scs 14–16 regarded as a whole. Thus it includes most of the text conventionally associated with Shakespeare and the short passage about Poitiers. At the other extreme lie Scs 1, 4–8, 17 and 18, where the low percentages suggest a different author. The placing of Scs 2a–b, 9–11 and 13 is less easy to interpret but could point either to mixed authorship or heavy revision (the latter being further hinted at by the incidence of monosyllabic feminine endings and the erroneous SP ‘Vil.’ at 13.73).

  TABLE 2 Monosyllabic feminine endings – total 19

  Scene Line

  2a 61 King: She mocks at vs Duglas, I cannot endure it.

  2b 210 I cannot blame the Scots that did besiege her,

  2c 455 Why so she is, for when I would embrace her,

  463 And that my old endeuor will remoue it,

  519 Were to prophaine the Idoll then confound it,

  557 The king that would distaine thee, will aduance thee:

  3 48 Poore shipskin how it braules with him that beateth it:

  159 Vpon which verdict I their Iudge condemne them.

  163 This packing euill, we both shall tremble for it.

  167 Stand where thou dost, ile part a little from thee

  9 33 How saiest thou, wilt thou vndertake to do it?

  11 15 Ch. Villiers I will not, nor I cannot do it,

  20 Ch. Returne, I hope thou wilt not,

  12 95 P: Back with the beast vnto the beast that sent him

  99 And double guild my spurs, but I will catch him,

  124 Pr. How confident their strength and number makes them,

  141 If then we hunt for death, why do we feare it?

  1431 If we do feare, how can we shun it? [feare emended to follow it]

  13 732 Vil. I hope your highnes will not so disgrace me,

  [SP emended to CHARLES]

  1 Emendation of 12.143, necessary for the argument of the speech, produces a full-length line, though 11.20 remains only seven syllables long.

  2 The unexpected occurrence of the SP ‘Vil.’, for Villiers, who is not present, in Sc. 13, before a speech clearly belonging to Charles, Duke of Normandy, becomes explicable if it is associated with composition or revision on the same occasion of the ‘passport’ sections of Scs 9 and 11, in both of which Villiers has appeared.

  N-grams

  A favoured technique of authorship investigation is based on the proposition that phrases rather than words are the mental units of composition, so that ideally authors should be identifiable, given adequate authenticated material for analysis, by the personal patterns of recurrence of repeated phrases of a few words, known as ‘n-grams’.49 It is held that three-word phrases, ‘trigrams’, offer the best kind of evidence, as occurring with sufficient frequency and yet overall in manageable numbers for collection and analysis. Early modern drama has been included in attempts to develop techniques of analysis of this material. In recent times, for instance, Brian Vickers has proposed that trigram evidence can assign authorship of Edward III jointly to Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd. On the basis of an index of ‘rare’ trigrams, compiled on the supposition that rarity implies strong likelihood of idiosyncrasy, shared by the play with those of Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, Soliman and Perseda and Cornelia (translated from the French of Robert Garnier) on the one hand and the plays of Shakespeare up to 1596 on the other, Vickers concludes that the traditional attribution to Shakespeare of Scs 2, 3 and 12 is correct and proposes Kyd as author of the remainder.50

  Three assumptions underlying his analysis are open to question: that Kyd’s plays offer a sufficient body of evidence for comparison;51 that ‘rarity’ is a definable and indubitably significant characteristic; and that the unit of composition of plays, including collaborations, was always the complete scene.52 To these may be added the caution that selection of material for comparison – in this instance ‘rare’ locutions – though practically inevitable, has a tendency to prejudge the outcome and incurs the further possible criticism of representing a sophisticated version of the old, highly subjective, method of authorship assignation on the basis of ‘parallel passages’ (though it does have the merit of being more systematic and of including more of the text in the analysis than haphazard parallel-spotting).53

  That n-grams may offer answers to questions of dramatic authorship between 1585 and 1595 is a proposition that demands an approach broader than can be offered by focus on any single text or author. Work in progress by a team headed by Martin Mueller aims to relate a broad range of early modern English plays to each other in terms of shared trigrams and longer phrases, working blind, without preconceived theories of attribution.54 Pending the outcome of such a broad survey, whose provisional findings already rouse high expectations, both in terms of confirming some existing hypotheses and of producing unexpected evidence for connection where none had hitherto been suspected, comparative study of any particular play might seem to be neither economical nor likely to carry full conviction in its results. Not least of the puzzles confronting scholarship in this area is the moral certainty that the authors who wrote even the proportion of plays that have survived (fewer before than after 1593, when the printing of playbooks first began to establish itself as a usual practice) include some known to us, if at all, only as names (see, e.g., Erne, Spanish Tragedy, 222–3).

  Examination of a single text in terms of its outward connections lies open to the possible charge of prejudice in emphasizing certain authors over others. Internal n-gram examination of Edward III, however, by way of testing whether the play is of collaborative authorship, and in the hope that the distribution of n-grams, and especially trigrams, may indicate the relation of scenes or sections of scenes to each other, is without prejudice to the identification of such authors as may be implied. The full record of this analysis, undertaken for the present edition of King Edward III, is too long to be included in its entirety here, but a few of its more salient findings, especially of the absence of such linkage between areas of text, may be briefly stated. Though it will be necessary to refer to the scenes of the play by number, this should not be taken to imply the unity of authorship of every scene. Indeed the findings hint at the composite nature of several.

  The analysis entailed indexing of n-grams varying in length from ten words to two. The bulk of evidence for the following findings comprises phrases of three or four words, of which there are in all some 390. Phrases from five to ten words long mainly occur in three situations: (a) as conscious repetitions, generally in the same scene or section (e.g. Lodwick’s repeated quotation of his dire verses (2.307, 316, 333), and the refrain lines that structure the arming of Prince Edward (6.184, 186, 191, 192, 197, 198, 203)); (b) as components in the rhetorical repetitions in highly wrought passages such as Lodwick’s first speech (2.167–89), Warwick’s perplexed soliloquy (2.513–32) or Audley’s lay sermon on readiness for death (12.134–49); (c) in the form of apparently inadvertent recollections in separate scenes. All three argue for common authorship of the repeated phrases, most evidently where an immediate design is apparent. More widely separated and inadvertent repetitions might seem equally strong pointers towards common authorship, as with ‘But all the whole dominions of the realm’, 1.83, and ‘The whole dominions of the realm of France’, 9.11, or ‘Myself … and Derby will’ at 3.202 and 8.105, where the former may offer a grain of support for the view that lines in Sc. 3 relating to military matters may have been present before a wholesale revision of the scene under the influence of Painter.

  Shorter repetitions, of three to four words, are harder to assess in relation to authorship, though the varying rates of self-repetition within individual scenes (omitting titles and forms of address) do mark several scenes as especially prone to them, often owing to their inclusion of rhetorically patterned passages. These internal repetitions occur in Scs 2c (20 repetitions), 2b (11), 12 (10), 3 and 6 (8), with four in each of Scs 2a and 18. Absence of phrasal linkage between scenes can surprise, as for instance between Sc. 6, which builds up to the battle of Crécy, and Sc. 8, which stages its outcome. As against passages with heavy linkage, lack, or infrequency, of n-gram links isolates at least ten passages as standing apart from the general phrasal texture of the play. They are: 2.141–61, the Countess’s formal welcome to the King (3 links); 3.138–72, the climax of the confrontation of King and Countess (2); 4.142–84, the Mariner’s narration of the sea battle (7); 6.52–79, the first exchange of insults between the two kings (3); 13.1–13, the French response to the portents before Poitiers (1); 13.41–60, King John’s rallying his men, the delivery of Salisbury to the French (2); 13.65–93, Prince Charles’s altercation with his father about Salisbury’s passport (2); 18.1–25, the fate of the burghers of Calais (1); 18.190–215, Prince Edward’s triumphal return (3); and 18.225–43, Prince Edward’s prophecy, King Edward’s final words (3). Each of these passages seems of stylistic confidence superior to those surrounding it.

  Recurrence of n-grams, while tending to reinforce a pattern of contrast in which Scs 2, 3 and 12 stand at one extreme, in the unexpected company of Scs 6 and 18, fails to define sharp distinctions of authorship but at the same time offers some evidence for division of authorship within scenes (most visibly in Sc. 10, where phrasal links with Scs 2 and 3 are confined to lines 1–35, the most frequent links after 36 being with Scs 1, 4, 6 and 18).

  The case for revision

  The Painter scenes

  It is the adaptation of Froissart’s narrative with additional material from Painter, from 2.167 to the end of Sc. 3, that most overtly suggests revision of an earlier version of Edward III. Lodwick, as Edward’s confidant, is derived from Painter’s Secretary. His significant role is confined to 2.167–359, a scene concerned with love poetry which lacks links with the rest of the play. He speaks without formal entry, which may help to identify him as an afterthought. Apart from his role at the end of Sc. 2 (459–625), Warwick speaks and is addressed in Sc. 1 (98–100, 132–5) despite his lack of any entry SD, and has a short exchange with the King, with whom he has entered, at 2.92–101, including at 94, ‘This is the Countess, Warwick, is it not?’, a close verbal echo of 1.132, and is again addressed at 2.137, ‘Warwick, Artois, to horse and let’s away’. Further reference to him occurs only at 3.18–19 and 197–9. The absence of his name from the initial entry SD (see 1.0.2n.) suggests Warwick may be an afterthought in Sc. 1, and the speech assigned to him at 1.98 would better fit the scene’s hierarchy if it were spoken by the senior lord onstage, the Earl of Derby, who remains silent in the scene as printed. Warwick’s first exchange with the King, complete with its echo of 1.132, and the other references to him early in Sc. 2 could likewise be removed without detriment to the action, which might identify them too as late insertions, though this time Warwick has formally entered.

  The paucity of reference back to the ‘Countess scenes’ late in the play is often noted. More precisely, the only two such references (at 6.155–7 and 8.100–1) make no mention of the Countess, only of the love-sick King, and they clearly hang together as King John’s insult and King Edward’s riposte before and after Crécy. Strikingly, neither the Countess – for all Edward’s promise of lasting fame (3.190–5) – nor Warwick receives so much as a mention after Sc. 3. King John’s allusion to Edward’s lovesickness would be compatible with a shorter early version of Sc. 2, in which, following Froissart (Chs 76–7), the infatuated King was brought to his senses by a single straight-talking dialogue with the Countess much like 2.360–442 (see LNn. for instances where Froissart and Painter run parallel).

  Later scenes include onstage roles for both Queen Philippa and the Earl of Salisbury, the spouses whose sole claims to the affections of King and Countess constitute the lady’s absolute reason for rejecting the advances of the King. Before he appears in Sc. 9, Salisbury is referred to only at 1.133, as serving in Brittany, and later as the Countess’s absent ‘husband’ (2.121–2, 437–8, 523; 3.127, 139, 148, 156–9) or ‘love’ (3.172–3). The King’s allusions to his Queen in asides following the arrival at Roxborough of his son swing between loyalty (3.74–9) and denigration (3.106–7). No further mention is made of the Queen until Sc. 10, where her exploits in war against the Scots are celebrated as the ‘painful travail of the Queen herself – / That, big with child, was every day in arms’ (10.44–5). The Queen adopts a dominant role in Sc. 18, where she secures mercy for the burghers of Calais and first mourns then welcomes her son. Nothing is made of earlier slighting references to her, and the King’s plastering over of her displeasure with Copeland is done in no spirit of retaliation. All in all, the last ten scenes can be said to forget what happened in Scs 2 and 3, a situation easiest to account for if those scenes included much that was written only after Scs 4–18 were already in existence.

  The simplest conclusion is that the use of Painter’s novel to add complexity to Froissart’s anecdote of the King and the Countess was the final stage of revision of the play.

  Scene 12

  As one of the main scenes attributed to Shakespeare and one that has had less analysis than Scs 2 and 3, Sc. 12 is worth further investigation. In it we see Edward, Prince of Wales, and his aged fellow-commander, Lord Audley, at dawn on the day of battle at Poitiers. They discuss the odds against them; the Prince dismisses the terms and gifts offered by heralds from the French King and Princes; and Audley persuades Prince Edward of the inevitability of death and the absurdity of fearing it, in terms which many readers since Collier have found similar to the Duke’s speech to Claudio in the much later (1603–4) Measure for Measure (3.1.5–41). As well as its link with Measure for Measure, the scene anticipates two features of Henry V (1599): the night scene before Agincourt (4.1) and the three embassies of the French herald, Montjoy (3.6.113–66, 4.3.79–127, 4.7.65–116). Having begun his speech in response to Audley’s review of the overwhelming and enclosing French forces with the line ‘Death’s name is much more mighty than his deeds’ (12.40), the Prince then abandons that topic – leaving it for Audley to dilate on later – and proceeds to the sophistic argument that as each side has only a single ‘power’, if one avoids enumerating the subdivisions of each army, they are equal.