A Statistical Approach

The null hypothesis (H₀) for Shakespeare authorship research might be stated as:

H₀: The various authorship attributions, originally made to works now generally attributed to 'William Shakespeare', do not arise from any one author's name — a known person or as a pen-name, or as part of any outside organized effort — but were applied by publishers/printers for their own purposes or reasons.

In a statistical analysis of this sort, the null hypothesis does not have to be proved.

These works have been variously attributed, including:

1. anonymously¹
2. with  no first name/initial, or with 'W.' or  'William'
3. to 'Shake-speare', 'Shake-Speare', 'Shakespeare', 'Shakespear' as last name (or only name)
4. to 'W.S.'²
5. with  'Shakespeare' (or some variant) as co-author to other known author names

To establish if this degree of variation is outside the contemporary norm, similar attributions for a number of known authors from the time could be analyzed in terms of names/spellings used to establish a normal level of standardization.³

These Shakespeare-like attributions have also been made to:

1. works not generally recognized today as by Shakespeare — included in what is called the Shakespeare Apocrypha
2. works published in folios appearing after the initial two, and many years later — some of which are also included in the Shakespeare Apocrypha⁴

Choosing to assign a made-up name rather than to publish anonymously might be done as a convenience, or for a number of possible reasons, including:

1. questionable authorship, not knowing who actually wrote the works
2. theft; intention to use the works without paying actual authors⁵
3. complicated multiple authorship where who wrote what, and in what proportions, was not clear (with no clear legal outlines as to how to apportion royalties)⁶
4. agreement with author(s) who wish to disassociate themselves from their works⁷
5. deflection of possible political/legal repercussions of publication

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1. then attributed to a name at another time.
2. One 'candidate' for authorship of Shakespeare works is named William Stanley.
3. The assumption, from a contemporary view, would be that author attributions would be more standard around an actual author's name; or, if based on a pen-name would match it closely throughout. The proposed contemporary analysis would adjust for naming differences experienced in that era.
4. The span of years, from earliest works later attributed to Shakespeare to latest works attributed by publishers/printers originally to some variant of that name, raises questions as to how one author could have written all this material in the course of his lifetime.
5. Ben Jonson's poem "On Poet-Ape" might be interpreted as confirmation of this sort of activity.
6. That the technical legalities of how to perform this would be as highly-developed as they are in today's Hollywood seems unlikely.
7. Like with the Alan Smithee attribution used in Hollywood when directors wished to disassociation themselves from a film.