The Case for Peele’s Authorship of Titus Andronicus 4.1: Cross-Examining Attribution Methods in a Disputed Scene

Abstract

William Weber (2014) argues that Shakespeare authored Titus Andronicus 4.1 as evidenced by verbal collocation data and auxiliary investigations into the vocabulary, rhetoric, and classical content of the scene. Anna Pruitt (2017) corroborates this view using n-gram testing, and critical opinion has shifted against the older orthodoxy assigning the scene to George Peele. Yet despite efforts to select a limited set of Shakespearean works for their experiments, the datasets compiled by Weber and Pruitt from the LION database are invalidated by the imbalanced canon sizes of the two authorship candidates. This oversight compromises their quantitative arguments, as does their neglecting The Troublesome Reign of King John. This article demonstrates that when equitable canons are implemented 4.1’s vocabulary is strongly indicative of Peele’s hand, in clear opposition to the current consensus view. Additionally, the scene contains classical allusiveness that is distinct from that of Shakespeare with regard to sources, effect, and scope, further reinforcing the case for Peele’s authorship. The article then revisits the un-Shakespearean metrical properties of 4.1 and testimonial evidence in support of an earlier Titus play, arguing that Peele’s ownership of the scene can greatly inform our model of Shakespeare’s timeline and alleged innovations in the revenge tragedy genre during his earliest career phase. Recent critiques of automated searching in attribution studies show why integrated methods that unite quantitative and qualitative techniques remain indispensable, and the 2014 and 2017 studies’ erroneous conclusions provide a cautionary tale for future research in the field.