Shakespeare and other English renaissance authors as characterized by Information Theory complexity quantifiers

O. A. ROSSO; H. CRAIG; P. MOSCATO

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Elsevier Science

Año: 2009 vol. 388 p. 916 - 926

0378-4371

We introduce novel Information Theory quantifiers in a computational linguistic study that involves a large corpus of English Renaissance literature. The 185 texts studied (136 plays and 49 poems in total), with first editions that range from 1580 to 1640, form a representative set of its period. Our data set includes 30 texts unquestionably attributed to Shakespeare; in addition we also included A Lover´s Complaint, a poem which generally appears in Shakespeare collected editions but whose authorship is currently in dispute. Our statistical complexity quantifiers combine the power of JensenShannon´s divergence with the entropy variations as computed from a probability distribution function of the observed word use frequencies. Our results show, among other things, that for a given entropy poems display higher complexity than plays, that Shakespeare´s work falls into two distinct clusters in entropy, and that his work is remarkable for its homogeneity and for its closeness to overall means.A Lover´s Complaint, a poem which generally appears in Shakespeare collected editions but whose authorship is currently in dispute. Our statistical complexity quantifiers combine the power of JensenShannon´s divergence with the entropy variations as computed from a probability distribution function of the observed word use frequencies. Our results show, among other things, that for a given entropy poems display higher complexity than plays, that Shakespeare´s work falls into two distinct clusters in entropy, and that his work is remarkable for its homogeneity and for its closeness to overall means.