ABSTRACT
In attempting a fresh investigation, in a volume honouring the work of Harold Short, we follow his admirable example in collaborative scholarship and draw such advantage as we can from our many years of working with each other. Like many history plays of the period, the play itself, King Henry VI, is loosely knit. In this last phase of the Wars of the Roses, battle scenes are surrounded by bouts of 'flyting' and of political diatribe. The dense grey web of entry-lines in its background registers the full intricacy of the information afforded when, taking Henry VI as target text, the successive Delta z-scores for all 54 plays are traced through 108 rolling segments. The three heavy black entry-lines trace the successive Delta z-scores for the three authorial groups to which we have assigned the 54 plays: 16 by Shakespeare, 15 by the other four recognized candidates, and 23 by ten other dramatists.
