Roger Stritmatter

Writer Verification of Historical Documents among Cohort Writers

Over the last century forensic document science has developed progressively more sophisticated pattern recognition methodologies for ascertaining the authorship of disputed documents. We present a writer verification method and an evaluation of its performance on historical documents with known and unknown writers. The questioned document is compared against handwriting samples of Herman Melville, a 19th century American author who has been hypothesized to be the writer as well as against samples crafted by several writers from the same time period. The comparison led to a high confidence result to the questioned documents writer ship, as well as gives evidence for the validity of the writer verification method in the context of historical documents. Such methodology can be applied to many such questioned historical documents, both in literary and legal fields.

Comparison of historical documents for writership

Over the last century forensic document science has developed progressively more sophisticated pattern recognition methodologies for ascertaining the authorship of disputed documents. These include advances not only in computer assisted stylometrics, but forensic handwriting analysis. We present a writer verification method and an evaluation of an actual historical document written by an unknown writer. The questioned document is compared against two known handwriting samples of Herman Melville, a 19th century American author who has been hypothesized to be the writer of this document. The comparison led to a high confidence result that the questioned document was written by the same writer as the known documents. Such methodology can be applied to many such questioned documents in historical writing, both in literary and legal fields.

Two more censored passages from Q2 Hamlet

W hat kinds of methodologies can best establish the reasons for the textual variation seen in the three earliest texts of Hamlet? It has long been known that approximately 80 lines contained in Hamlet F (1623) are missing from Q2 (1604–05). These include four major passages (F 2.2.238–67; 2.2.335–60; 5.1.30–41; 5.2.68–81) and a selection of shorter ones. Two of the longer passages – those from 2.2 – were long regarded, until about 1987, as cuts to Q2 occasioned by censorship, both aimed at avoiding offense to the wife of King James, the new Queen Anne of Denmark. John Dover Wilson, for example, speculated that ‘Given Hamlet’s negative view of Denmark, it has seemed reasonable to several editors that the missing passage from 2.2.328–64 was thought dangerous with a Danish queen on the throne’. The second passage generally attributed to censorious deletion, on both external and textual grounds, contains the extended discussion between Hamlet and Rosencrantz about the ‘little aerie’ of child players who have embroiled themselves in a political controversy, occasioning much ‘throwing about of brains’ (2.2.369). Wilson endorsed the explanation of De Groot that this passage, like the former, was eliminated to avoid offending Queen Anne, who had in 1604 just taken over the Children of the Chapel and would be particularly sensitive to any implication of their involvement in theatrical scandal. Harold Jenkins, editor of the Arden Hamlet, concurred in 1982 that both passages ‘certainly are omissions from Q2 and not additions in F’.

Shifting the Centre of Gravity of the Falstaffiad: The Advantage of an Early Date for the Merry Wives of Windsor:

cently most critics have favoured the later dates of 1596-1597(when Momplegart, though not in england, was actually inducted into the order);4 or 1598 (following a terminus a quo established by a conservative dating of the two henry iv plays);5 or even 1601 (the year of the Queen’s first attendance at a garter induction since 1593 and shortly before Q’s 1602 publication).6 In an influential study of the play’s genesis and topical context, green argued for the 1597 date, insisting not only that Momplegart remained a topical figure for English audiences “through 1604”7 but that “we find [...] absolutely no links between the play and either the event of or personages involved in the 1593 celebration.”8 green’s argument is persuasive. Momplegart’s extended nineyear attempt to obtain his investiture means that the play’s topicality would have remained current during the entire period 1592-1602, from earliest suspected composition date to the publication of Q. on the other hand, his denial of any concrete connection between the play and Momplegart’s 1592-1593 visit remains far less credible. the chronological placement of Merry Wives has been further complicated by a number of factors, among them the significant textual variation between Q (1602) and f (1623) texts. as P. a. daniel demonstrated,9 both texts share a lost common ancestor. thus, while Quiller-couch assures us that