Fulke Greville and the Shakespeare Project

        The computer program that identified Fulke Greville as the possible author of Shakes-Speares Sonnets and Plays was designed by Robert J. Valenza, Keck Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Claremont McKenna College, a leader in his field. Professor Valenza designed the text analysis program Intellex; Linear Algebra, wrote An Introduction to Abstract Mathematics, and co-wrote Abstract Algebra. He defined the notion of elasticity of factorization in number fields and he was lead engineer for software for RCA communications satellites and orbital analyst or mission analysis leader for six satellite launches. He has never lost a spacecraft. Professor Valenza originated the concept of modal analysis for author identification and he has published several articles on the subject. In the late 1980s he designed a computer program that could compare works by Elizabethan writers based on the concept that all writers display certain patterns and techniques in their works that exhibit ‘the quality of a fingerprint’.

        Starting in 1987, a team of California professors led by Professor Ward Elliot, a mathematician and statistician, used Valenza’s ‘signal processing’ method to test authorship of works attributed to Shakespeare based on his ‘use of 52 key words, such as grief, hope and secret’. The results of the Shakespeare Project were reported in The Daily Telegraph and were well received by British attribution scholars. MacDonald Jackson welcomed the results and the highly respected Brian Vickers, a leader in the field of ‘attribution studies’, wrote:

        ‘The Shakespeare Project … ‘developed a total of 51 computer tests of Shakespeare play authorship, 14 of poem authorship ... Elliot and Valenza used and rejected something like 300 tests which did not show a sharp enough distinction between Shakespeare and other dramatists ... The Elliot-Valenza tests are characterized by three basic principles: first a ‘clean baseline’, that is texts as thoroughly purged of dubious material as possible; secondly a ‘block and profile’ method, comparing life-sized blocks to each other in order to establish an author’s ‘profile’, his characteristic linguistic preferences; and thirdly, what they called their ‘silver bullet approach’, relying on negative evidence to disprove common authorship, rather than on shared unique quirks purporting to prove it … The independent findings of the Claremont group are based on a reliable methodology … their results seem to me, and to others working in this field … accurate and reliable examples of literary statistics, or ‘word-crunching’ as it is sometimes called … The wide range of tests used by Elliot and Valenza ... evinces confidence that they have not applied some idiosyncratic and inappropriate methodology. They show an admirable open-minded readiness to adopt new approaches and learn new tricks ... Scholarly initiative of this kind, a pragmatic readiness to consider many different options, has been one of the strongest features of the Elliot-Valenza research program.’ 

Shakespeare, Co-Author, A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays, Brian Vickers, OUP, (2004), pp. 116-118.