Stylometry approaching Parnassus

摘要

The article gives a brief outline of the fruitless attempts in the past at finding the author(s) of the Parnassus Plays, an anonymous trilogy performed between 1597 and 1601 at St. John's College in Cambridge as part of the Christmas festivities, and then moves on to employ the R Stylo features Rolling Delta and Rolling Classify, which in various approaches confirm John Marston and Thomas Nashe as the authors. As collaborative scenarios count among the assets of these relatively new stylometric tools, it became possible to tip the scales towards Glatzer's view that the plays have two authors, and Leishman's advocacy of one author, based on the manuscript prologue of Part 2 of The Return, gave way to a 'battle of the plays' between Marston and Nashe.