The Authorship of Pericles: New Evidence for Wilkins

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Abstract
A method to resolve problems of authorship in early English drama is described. The proposed technique complements a previous approach, which was based on the first word of every speech, by relying on the remaining words Procedures are outlined for selecting the pool of words and also its subsets to discrtminate between the suspected authors taken in pairs. Then, assuming that Chapman, Jonson, Middleton, Shakespeare and Webster are the only dramatists who could have written The Alchemist and The Duchess of Malfi, the method is validated by a simulated identification of the authorship of these two plays. Further verification is obtained when Shakespeare is selected from Tourneur, Wilkins, and the five playwrights above, as the writer of Acts III, IV and V of Pericles. Finally, the proposed method reveals that Wilkins is more likely than the nature Shakespeare to be the main author of Acts I and II of Pericles.

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