Rare Internal Tetragrams between ‘Shakespeare’ (Scenes 4-9) and ‘Non-Shakespeare’ Scenes in Arden of Faversham
August 27, 2015© Darren Freebury-Jones 2015
This data has been collected for the purpose of my thesis, ‘Kyd and Shakespeare: Authorship, Influence, and Collaboration’.
‘SHAKESPEARE’
To let thee know I am no coward I
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
To let thee know all that I haue contriued
‘SHAKESPEARE’
If I, the next time that I meet the hind
If I, the next time that I meet the slave
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
The next time that I take thee neare my house
‘SHAKESPEARE’
But now I am going to see what floode it is
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
Now I am going to London vpon hope
And now I am going to fling them in the Temes
‘SHAKESPEARE’
But braul not when I am gone in any case,
But sirs be sure to speede him, when he comes
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
Nay sirs, touch not his man in any case,
But stand close, and take you fittest standing
‘SHAKESPEARE’
Come M. Francklin let vs go on softly
Come M. Francklin, let vs go to bed
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
Now M. Francklin let vs go walke in Paules
‘SHAKESPEARE’
Pardon me M. Arden I can no more
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
Pardon me M. Arden, Ile away
‘SHAKESPEARE’
What M. Arden, you are well met,
I haue longd this fortnights day to speake with you
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
Mistres Arden you are well met,
I am sorry that your husband is from home
‘SHAKESPEARE’
Come M. Arden let vs be going
‘NON-SHAKESPEARE’
Come let vs be going, and wele bate at Rochester
Cardiff Shakespeare 
I’m very interested in Shakespeare’s early plays and their authorship too, and find this data very enticing. I also have an interest in the many anonymous plays of this era and whether it is possible that Shakespeare had a hand in other people’s scripts, as well as they in his.
A brief look at these phrases in Shakespeare offers little. The only phrase found in the First Folio is “I fell asleep”, in 1 Henry IV, which might suggest that these phrases, and hence this passage, is not by Shakespeare. On the other hand, if we look at the phrase “Pardon me, [X]”, where X is either a named individual or the title or status of an individual (‘my lord’, ‘madam’, etc.) the statistics are more interesting and quite revealing.
PERIOD COUNT No. of TEXTS MEAN
1590-92 9 7 1.3
1593-8 6 10 0.6
1599-1605 9 9 1.0
1606-13 0 9 0.0
TOTAL 24 37 0.65
The data suggests that this phrase from Arden of Faversham is relatively prominent in early Shakespeare, with the highest mean found in the first 7 plays, whilst it doesn’t occur at all in the last 9 plays.
There is the possibility that this phrase was used widely in the early 1590s, and became unfashionable in the mid1600s, and that the Shakespeare data captures this general trend.
On the other hand, such significant deviations from the overall mean, in both directions, could suggest significant involvement of different hands in early Shakespeare, compared to later, if this pattern were repeated on a regular basis. It might also lead to the identification of Shakespearian lexical signatures in parts of anonymous plays from the 1590-2 period, in those instances where such words and phrases have relatively high counts in Shakespeare too.
Of course, this approach makes one very large assumption, namely that Shakespeare actually wrote all the words found in the First Folio, whereas there is increasing evidence of other hands in parts of Shakespeare. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a pattern here, and a more thorough comparison of this passage from Arden of Faversham to the First Folio than I have carried out may add to the impression that, textually speaking, Shakespeare’s lexical traces may be discernible in any number of other places, alongside those where we would normally expect to find him!