Analyzing Co-Authorship in Timon of Athens using the Shakespeare Affinity Test

It has been suggested that Shakespeare's play Timon of Athens might have been co-authored with Thomas Middleton. Here I will use some techniques made possible by my Shakespeare Affinity Test to investigate this question.

Plotting the Unusual Shakespeare Words

As I explained in my blog post, the Shakespeare Affinity Test identifies words that occur in Shakespeare plays but are relatively unusual compared with the rest of the database of 500+ plays. By charting where these words occur in a play possibly co-authored by Shakespeare, it might be possible to determine which sections were written by Shakespeare and which sections were written by someone else.

Note, the Shakespeare Affinity Test is not an authorship test. There is currently no reliable method for determining authorship. The SAT is just a tool for analyzing the unusual vocabulary in a play.

I ran Timon of Athens using standard parameters of the SAT to create this chart that plots these "hits":

As you can see above, there are several gaps where there are fewer rare Shakespeare words. These are:

Gap 1: Words 797-1799. Roughly Act 1, Scene 1, Line 119-275.

Gap 2: Words 8945-10325. Essentially all of Act 3, Scene 5 and 6.

Gap 3: Words 14754-16259. Most of Act 5, Scene 1.

Comparing with Wikipedia's summary of one person's analysis:

John Jowett, editor of the play for both the Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Works and the individual Oxford Shakespeare edition, believes Middleton worked with Shakespeare in an understudy capacity and wrote scenes 2 (1.2 in editions which divide the play into acts), 5 (3.1), 6 (3.2), 7 (3.3), 8 (3.4), 9 (3.5), 10 (3.6) and the last eighty lines of 14 (4.3).

The only agreement between the above chart and this analysis seems to be on Act 3, Scene 5 and 6.

Analyzing Unusual Words in the Gaps

I ran a rare word test on just the gaps. These are rare words that occur in the gaps, no other Shakespeare play, and only 20 or fewer times in the whole database:

unclew, 1354 -- unique

repugnancy, 9067 -- The Duchess of Suffolk

byzantium, 9181 -- Selimus, Hans Beer-Pot

briber, 9185 -- unique

rioter, 9235 -- Mucedorus; Middleton, A Trick to Catch the Old One (twice) and Michaelmas Term; Yorkshire Tragedy

usure, 9579 -- common word

exceptless, 15162 -- unique

usure, 15260 -- common word

phrynia, 15531 -- unique

timandra, 15533 -- The Bondman, Philip Massinger (1624)

opulency, 15798 -- unique

If Middleton wrote these sections, you might expect there to be words not found in other Shakespeare plays that Middleton commonly used. However, there is little evidence here for Middleton's authorship of these passages. The only word of interest is "rioter" in Act 3, Scene 5 of the play.

Analyzing Unique Words in Timon of Athens

Using the database, we can easily generate a list of all of the words that appear in Timon of Athens but in no other Shakespeare First Folio plays. There are 91 such words:

alcibiades, apemantus, approacher, ardent, balsam, banditti, blain, brevis, briber, byzantium, caphis, carper, castigate, cauterize, composture,, confectionary, contentless, decimation, defiler, detention, distasteful, dividant, droplet, embalm, ensear, exceptless, exhaust, flaminius, fragile, furor, gluttonous, hortensius, indisposition, insculpture, ira, isidore, jutting, lacedaemon, liquorish, lucullus, madwoman, mangy, manslaughter, misanthropos, monstrousness, mountant, numberless, nutriment, oathable, obliquy, opulency, passive, pelf, penurious, philotus, phrynia, procreation, rampire, recanter, recoverable, regardful, regular, reliance, repugnancy, rioter, sacrificial, servilius, slavelike, softness, solidar, spilth, steepy, straggle, suitable, timandra, towardly, trenchant, unagreeable, unaptness, uncharged, unclew, unctuous, unpeaceable, untirable, usure, varro's, viced, wappened, whittle

We can use this as a basis to compare with the other plays in the database. I ran a test on five of Middleton's plays from the period; of those 91 words, these are the ones that showed up in those plays:

The Phoenix (1603-4) -  balsam

Michaelmas Term (1604) - rioter, towardly

Trick to Catch the Old One (1605) - penurious, rioter, usure

Mad World - none

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613) - 37 - suitable

"penurious" was pretty common in plays of the period as was "balsam". "towardly" was in Eastward Ho, so Middleton's use isn't notable. "usure" was relatively common; it's in Volpone and other plays.

Really the only word of interest is "rioter". As explained above, that word appears in Act 3, Scene 5 of Timon of Athens, in one of the gaps and was not a very common word in plays of the period. Middleton uses it in two plays of the period and if he actually wrote Yorkshire Tragedy, in three plays. 

Comparing Relatively Rare Words in Middleton's plays with Timon of Athens

Now I will do a mini "Middleton Affinity Test". I will select out all of the unusual words in the above five plays and see how often and where they occur in Timon of Athens. Some of these words occur in other Shakespeare plays. Here is the list:

6185 scarcity

6538 towardly

7121 disfurnish

8885 unnoted

9235 rioter

9579 usure

11539 spital

12502 quillet

14682 thievery

14691 attraction

15260 usure

Most of these words we looked at above and the other ones are not particularly notable. "spital" is common in Shakespeare; "attraction" is in Merry Wives of Windsor and Pericles; "scarcity" is in Venus and Adonis; "quillet" is very common; "unnoted" is in Rape of Lucrece. "disfurnish" is in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Pericles.

This list actually shows the likelihood that Middleton borrowed some unusual words from Shakespeare rather than anything else. It certainly is not evidence of co-authorship.

Conclusion

There is no reason to conclude from this that Thomas Middleton wrote a substantial portion of Timon of Athens. There are some gaps in rare Shakespeare words, particularly in Act 3, Scene 5 and 6. If you want to look for co-authorship, I would look there.  The attribution to Middleton is possible, but seems largely unsupported by this data.

Introducing the Shakespeare Affinity Test

I developed the Shakespeare Affinity Test (SAT) out of a simple hypothetical. What if the First Folio contained only 35 plays, and a 36th play was discovered. Could we devise an objective test, based on the other 35 plays, that would tell us, with some confidence, whether it was written by William Shakespeare?

The SAT succeeds quite well in that goal. Out of 300+ plays written before 1620, it groups 27 of the 36 First Folio plays in the top 30 results. It also identifies Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles -- two plays generally believed to be co-written by Shakespeare but not included in the First Folio -- as potentially written by Shakespeare.

I call it an "affinity" test rather than an "authorship" test because there is no known method for determining authorship with any degree of confidence. The Shakespeare canon also may be a unique case. His vocabulary was unusual, and the canon is unusually large. So, the test also may not have general applicability for determining authorship with other authors. Even with regard to Shakespeare's plays, it is only a guide to determining authorship. It is not a definitive test.

That said, it is an objective, easily modifiable, and extensible rare word test. I hope it will find many uses. I will cover some of those below and in future blog posts.

Design Criteria for Shakespeare Affinity Test (SAT) 

I had a few key criteria for my test:
1. Objective. The test would need to be as straightforward and unbiased as possible.
2. Reproducible. Anyone should be able to reproduce the test and get the same results. It should also be easy to modify the test to see if the results are due to cherry-picked parameters or other biasing factors.
3. Valid. There should be good reason to think that the test actually works.

Fortunately, independent researcher Pervez Rizvi has developed a database of the full text of 500+ English language plays from the Early Modern period. This database is a free, publicly available corpus. You can download it from his website. My test runs on this database completely unmodified. It runs using standard SQL code on the MySQL database, available for free. Anyone can run the same test and get the same results.

Note, I am not going to spend time and energy critiquing other authorship tests done in the field of Shakespeare scholarship. But all tests must meet the above three criteria. These are the most basic standards of good scholarship.

General Theory Behind a Rare Word Test

Let me give an example of the theoretical motivation behind the test. The word “cicatrice” (a scar) occurs in four plays of Shakespeare. However, the word only occurs in one other play in the database of 500+ plays. So "cicatrice" serves as a marker for a Shakespeare play.  If we found a previously unknown play from that period with the word “cicatrice” in it, that might be a hint that the play was written by Shakespeare.

The beauty of my test is that it has an objective standard for what is a "rare word." It uses the prevalence of words in the entire database to determine which ones are rare. The characteristics of that definition can easily be changed to narrow the query. For instance, you could look for rare words during a certain time period or look for unusual words that begin with the prefix "un-" or the suffix "-ate". I have done such tests -- with interesting results -- that I will be sharing in time.

Once again, this is an "affinity" test, not an "authorship" test. I am not claiming it produces a reliable determination of authorship. It gives useful and objective information about word usage in early modern English plays. That information can be helpful in determining authorship.

How the Test Works

Pervez Rizvi's database lists the “lemmatized” form for each word in a play. This is the dictionary headword form; so for instance “buy,” “bought,” and “buying” would all be listed as “buy.” This simplification makes comparison straightforward. After all, we want “apple” and “apples” to count as the same word. The test runs on the lemmatized forms of words.

I will now describe the test in an algorithmic form. This is the procedure used to produce the results.

1. Select the lemmas in the database that occur 20 times or fewer. (Note. this is not counting how many plays it occurs in, but how many total occurrences). Let's call this list RARE_LEMMAS. These are words that objectively aren't very common in early modern English plays. (Note: 20 is an arbitrary number, and I encourage people to play with different parameters and compare results.)

2. Select the lemmas that occur in Shakespeare's First Folio plays. For Henry VIII, only use the Shakespeare section, not the Fletcher section. Pervez Rizvi's database has this division built-in. Let's call this list SHAKESPEARE_LEMMAS.

3. Select only the words in the RARE_LEMMAS list that also occur in the SHAKESPEARE_LEMMAS list. This gives you RARE_SHAKESPEARE_LEMMAS.

4. Count how many of the RARE_SHAKESPEARE_LEMMAS occur in each play. Count each lemma only once. This gives you the RAW_SCORE.

5. For First Folio plays, you run the same test, but first create a special SHAKESPEARE_LEMMAS list from only the other 35 First Folio plays. Using that, you create a RARE_SHAKESPEARE_LEMMAS list to compare with the play and generate a RAW_SCORE.

The RAW_SCORE isn't scaled in any way for the length of the play. The number is useful but it provides a somewhat skewed result. To scale it, you divide the RAW_SCORE by the total number of unique lemmas in each play. This number, NUM_TOKENS, is included in the database for each play. This produces a SCALED_SCORE. Multiply this number by 1000 to get the FINAL_SCORE.

Once again, I encourage people to modify the parameters as they see fit. But the simple fact is, the test works. It can identify plays written by Shakespeare, especially later plays, reasonably well. It works less well for very early plays, and I will discuss this issue in a later blog post.

Here are the rough results. This is out of approximately 300 plays written before 1620. Shakespeare's plays are very strongly grouped to the top of the list. You should be able to click on each image to read it clearly:

So, for instance, The Tempest scores 39.69 while Jonson's The Alchemist scores only 27.25. Hamlet scores highest with 67.70. Interestingly, Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King scores extremely low with 12.07. Over time I will release more detailed data along with the SQL code. This blog post is just designed to give people a general idea of how the test works.

Other Uses for the Test

The test has many uses. It can be used to help divide up plays based on co-authorship or determine whether a play is co-authored. It also can help identify when specific words enter the Shakespeare canon and how unusual they were at the time. The high scores for What You Will and The Devil's Charter should spur further research, and I will have more to say on this later.

Young Henry Neville, Walsingham, and Marco Antonio Pigafetta

It has been suggested for awhile that Henry Neville might have traveled in 1583 with Francis Walsingham to the court of King James VI in Scotland. I have uncovered some new evidence that supports this.

1582 Letter from Cobham to Walsingham Specifically Mentions Neville

In the National Archives there is a very interesting letter from Henry Cobham, ambassador to France, to Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's principal secretary:

If Signor Pigafetti, of whom I have written in my former letters ‘to be’ the acquaintance of young Mr Nevell, is at present on his departure towards England...  I beseech you that Pigafetta may receive the favour to transport at his return a gelding, having often been visited by him. He has written a book of his long ‘voyage’ passed in Turkey and Judea, which he desires her Majesty may see.—Paris, 17 Sept. 1582. (British History Online)

Here is a photo of the actual letter, I have marked the mention of "Pigafetti" and "young Mr. Nevell":

The "young Mr Nevell" here is almost certainly a reference to Henry Neville who was travelling in Italy at the time with his tutor and lifelong friend Henry Savile. "Signor Pigafetti" is a reference to Marco Antonio Pigafetta:

Hakluyt turned again to the Italian reformers, promoting the publication of the Itinerario da Vienna a Constantinopli by the Italian traveller Marco Antonio Pigafetta. Raised in the same family of the far more famous Antonio, Marco Antonio Pigafetta began to question his Catholic faith in Vicenza, one of the Italian centers of diffusion of Protestant doctrines. (The Routledge Research Companion to Anglo-Italian Renaissance Literature)

Pigafetta was related to Antonio Pigafetta whose book on Magellan's circumnavigation of the world, directly or indirectly, was a source for The Tempest ("Setebos" apparently comes from there ultimately).

1583 Walsingham's Embassy to Scotland

In August 1583 Walsingham traveled to Scotland to meet with King James VI; here is an excellent overview of the trip. Richard Edes was travelling there at the same time and comments on them in his poem Iter Boreale, which circulated in manuscript, and was translated by Dana Sutton in The Philological Museum:

Our number was great, but still was greater that of those who composed the Lord Ambassador’s retinue. Foremost among them was the Earl of Essex,  then the two Wardens of the border country, Lord Scrope  and fierce Foster (whom they say to be good at guarding himself).  There too were two brothers, both distinguished by the golden Garter, the true scions of Russell,  that Earl to whom Bedford lends its name. Joined to them were others resplendent in purple and gold, Mildmay, Neville,  distinguished for his book-learning [doctusque libros tractare Nevillus], that right noble lad of the North, Lowther,  Widdrington,  Barnston, the Musgraves, skilled at horse-riding, Fenwick

Sutton suggests that this "Neville" might refer to Henry Neville. The timing fits perfectly. By August 1583, Neville was back from his journey to Europe, and this was before he married Anne Killigrew in 1584 and moved to Mayfield in Sussex. So he would have had free time to travel to Scotland. The letter above shows clearly that Walsingham was familiar with "young Mr. Nevell," so it makes sense that he might have been included on the mission. The involvement of the Earl of Essex also would presage Neville's later imprisonment for his involvement in the Essex Rebellion.

Edes got his BA from Oxford in 1574 and MA in 1578, so he almost certainly knew Henry Savile and would have known of Savile's trip to Europe. The reference to "distinguished for his book-learning" would have been a reference to the hunting for Greek and Latin manuscripts Savile was engaged in during the trip -- and which Henry Neville, as his travelling companion, must have been involved with.

We also have a letter from Henry Neville's father to Walsingham in 1585, so the father might have helped arranged the journey through his connection to Walsingham. The father was involved in a lot of activities Walsingham would have been engaged with, including managing the imprisonment of the Duke of Norfolk in 1569. So Walsingham might have included "young Mr. Nevell" as a favor to his father.

Conclusion

More work needs to be done tracing the details of this trip to Scotland, but it seems possible that Henry Neville might have been part of this group in 1583. There would need to be further evidence, though, to conclude it is likely, since there were so many people named "Neville".

The Inscription on Shakespeare's Sonnets at the University of Manchester

The John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester has a copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets with an inscription written on the last page. You can see a high resolution version at the Folger Library.

John Casson and others have suggested that this inscription might have been made by Henry Neville of Billingbear (d. 1615). Here I will explore this possibility by comparing the inscription with samples from Henry Neville's letters. I think these comparisons raise the possibility that he may have.

Here is a close-up view of the inscription. It reads: "Comendacions to my very kind and approued ffrind B: M:":

Compare the first line with these examples. I will go into depth on each word:

And the second line:

Why would Henry Neville inscribe a copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets?

Almost all Shakespeare scholars agree that the "Mr. W.H" of the Sonnets dedication refers to either William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, or Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Henry Neville was very close with both men.

Southampton and Neville were imprisoned together due to their participation in the Essex Rebellion in 1601. Later they were political allies. To quote The History of Parliament Online:

By the end of October 1611 he had set his sights on becoming secretary of state, or at the very least a privy councillor. Rochester accordingly hosted a series of meetings in his Whitehall apartments with Neville, Lord Sheffield and the earl of Southampton, described by one observer as Neville’s ‘champion’.

Henry Neville had a multi-generational connection to the Sidney/Herbert family. As a young man he traveled in Europe with William Herbert's uncle Robert Sidney.  In addition, Neville and William Herbert were close political allies.

All three men were on the governing council of the Virginia Company. Most scholars agree that the reference in the dedication of the Sonnets to the "Adventurer in Setting Forth" is a reference to the Virginia Company; people involved with the project were typically called "adventurers."

It's also worth noting that Henry Neville appears to have owned a manuscript copy of Beaumont and Fletcher's play A King and No King (See "Sir Henry Neville Reads Beaumont and Fletcher", JSTOR). Fletcher was Shakespeare's co-author of Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen:

In 1616, Ben Jonson, famous for editing Shakespeare's First Folio, wrote an Epigram to Neville. So Henry Neville seems to have traveled in the same circles as William Shakespeare. It's reasonable to think he might have had an interest in the Sonnets and inscribed a copy to a friend.

A Study in Variation

Before we get into the details, I'd like to show a few examples to demonstrate the care required in handwriting attribution like this. Henry Neville varied his handwriting a great deal depending on the circumstances and even within a single document. So to understand what is likely going on here, we need to study that variation.

Please examine carefully these examples; Examples A and B are from the inscription, the rest are from Henry Neville's letters (C and D are from a single letter from Henry Neville from 1600 to Henry Cuffe; E is from a draft letter from Henry Neville; F and G are from a single letter from Henry Neville Robert Cecil in 1600):

Look at Examples C and D of the word "very". Even though they are from a single letter, there are substantial differences. The length of the line coming down from the word-initial "v" is different as well as the "r". Compared with Example A from the Sonnets inscription, you can see how Example D matches the initial "v" much better than Example C. Neither of them is a match for the "y" in Example A, but Examples F and G do seem to match the "y" quite well.

Example E matches Example A extremely closely in terms of the "e" and "r", but the "v" and the "y" don't really match well. 

Look at "my", Example B, from the inscription. It matches examples F and G  quite well in terms of the "m", but the "y" is actually a closer match with Example C.

Studying Variation in a Single Letter

There is a draft letter at The National Archives which Henry Neville wrote in his "formal secretary hand". I reproduce it here. I have circled three examples of the word "very" written on the document (note the January 1599 date is "new style"; Henry Neville wrote this from London before he left for France). Note, there is a ten year gap between this letter and the Sonnets inscription, so even if the same person wrote both, we should expect some variability based on the passage of time alone:

Here you can see them in detail:

There are several important things to note here. First note how the letter "e" varies; Examples H and I have the more formal "e" that Henry Neville used in some correspondence, while Example J has the "e" that he usually used. This is the form of "e" found on the Sonnets inscription.

Look at how the "y" is formed. Examples H and I have a "y" formed in a more careful style. J has a more cursive-style "y" written with just one pen stroke. This is the *exact same* variation we saw in the example from the inscription above. 

This illustration should help make it clear:

Examples B and A above are from the inscription. Examples J and H are from that 1599 letter. See how the "y" in Example J is like the one in example B, while the "y" in Example Example H is like the one in Example A. The writer of the Sonnets inscription varies their "y" just like Henry Neville does. This is strong evidence for the possibility that Henry Neville wrote this inscription.

Take a step back now and look at these two in comparison. There are striking similarities:

Look out how the line from the "y" in "my" extends up in both Examples I and K. Look out how the line from "y" in "very" extends out to the following word in both Example I and K. 

Please note, comparing Example I and K, the "very" and "my" are not close matches. But I have already shown above strong matches between Henry Neville's "my" and "very" and the Sonnets inscription. Henry Neville varied how he wrote words, depending on the style of the letter and other factors. The key is to match his variation with the variation on the inscription. It appears to be a match, and that really is the strongest possible type of evidence.

See this blog post I wrote about Neville's 1590 letter to Lord Burghley for more detailed analysis of this type of variation.

Commendations

Here is a close-up view of the first word:

Henry Neville in his confession of 1601 after the Essex Rebellion wrote "very kind commendacions" (For those unfamiliar with secretary hand, I underlined the "c" letters, and the letter at the end that looks like a "6" is an "s"):

If you compare "commendacions" with the inscription, it really is a remarkably close match:

Here is another comparison from a letter from 1599, you should be able to click on the image and see it in great detail. Please compare each pen stroke and how each letter connects to the following letter, the letter formation appears identical:

Compare to these control samples which show just how Henry Neville's contemporaries varied this word; some of these examples are taken from letters written to Henry Neville. There is a great deal of variation in how this word was written. I have yet to find an example nearly as close of a match to the inscription Neville's handwriting:

There is another example of Henry Neville writing the word as a "pen trial" or scribble on the back of a letter. I discovered this at the Berkshire Record Office. It's hard to read but it is an important sample to examine. The shape and angle of the "d" is almost an exact match for the Sonnets inscription and it seems to also be missing an "i" just like the inscription:

Using retroreveal.org provides perhaps a little more clarity; the "d" seems to match the inscription quite closely, and the "c" (looks like a circle divided into four) is the same general type as the inscription:

Here is an example from 1608 with similar wording, "my very affectionate commendacions" and strikingly similar handwriting:

Here is a comparison of the inscription with three examples from Neville's handwriting:

In the inscription, the "s" in "comendacions" has a slightly open loop at the top. Henry Neville generally didn't write his "s" with a loop, but I did find examples of loops going the other way in several letters. This is from a draft letter in 1599:

There is a similar example a letter from 1599:

The abbreviation mark 

Look at the mark above the first word:

This is an abbreviation mark. To quote the Society of Genealogists: "In Secretary Hand, an abbreviation mark, a dash or a symbol, would appear above these letters while omitting the ‘i.’" That is why there is no "i". As far as having only one "m", it could be Henry Neville used the mark to omit the second "m" as well, or this could be just a variation in spelling. We have examples of him writing both "honor" and "honnor" in his letters, for instance.

Though Henry Neville did not usually use such abbreviations in his letters, he did in his letter from 1590 to Lord Burghley (see this blog post)

Here are some samples from that letter. Though less elaborate, they are similar in shape to the mark on the inscription, and all begin with dark point on the right, just like the inscription:

Here is another example of an abbreviation mark from October 1612. Just like in the inscription, in this case Henry Neville is using it to show a missing "m" in "commanded":

I found a different type of abbreviation mark on a document Neville wrote while ambassador to France in 1600 above the word "viz":

I have found a draft letter from 1600 where Henry Neville writes the word "comendacions" with only one "m", just like the first line of the inscription:

Neville almost always put a line with two loops under his signature; here is an examples from 1608, it shows his ornamental writing:

I have also found this example in a scribble after "and":

So the abbreviation mark in the inscription is certainly consistent with what we know about Henry Neville's handwriting style and general penmanship.

Look at this address Neville wrote in 1606. He has the "To" hugely oversized to the rest of the text. This is not something I have seen in the 1598-1601 period but may be a later development in his handwriting. It echoes the giant "C" in the Sonnets inscription:

"very kind"

If we compare "very kind" from the 1601 confession with the inscription, it certainly seems like it could be written by the same person:

"very"

I have collected many examples of "very" from Henry Neville's letters to compare to the inscription. Compare the inscription on the left with the samples on the right. Some are closer in terms of the "v" or the "e" or the "r" or the "y", but taken all together, it is an incredibly close match:

"kind"

"kind" is a similar situation. To my eye, this example from a 1600 letter to Robert Cecil is a very close match:

This example of "king" from a very formal 1600 letter is also a very close match for the "kin":

This example from a 1606 letter to Dudley Carleton is an extremely good match for the "k":

These two examples are from February 1601. The first is a draft letter and the second is the final version, both in Henry Neville's handwriting. You can see how the pen strokes are identical in all three examples though the style differs. This is completely consistent with a single person writing all three:

"and"

Compare the "and" from the inscription:

With these from the 1600 letter to Cecil, they are quite in-line with the inscription, especially the line above the "a", the "n", and and the formation of the "d":

"my" also seems to match quite well with the samples from Neville's letters:

Bottom Line of the Inscription

The bottom line reads "approued ffrind B: M:"

I can't find an example of "approued" that matches this word; generally Henry Neville spelled it with a "v" not a "u". The very thick "p" letters are quite unusual; you will not see it often in letters of the period. But I found it in a 1594 letter by Neville. The "p" letters are not as long as the inscription but they have a similar shape and thickness. the initial "a" is consistent with Neville's writing including the line on top. Neville often included a line coming up from the bottom of his "p" letters, but not always:

This example from a January 1609 letter to Robert Cecil is incredibly compelling. The spelling is different, but the "p" is very very close, even though the extenders down are not as thick as the inscription. Look at the "r"; it is also very close to the inscription. The spelling is of course completely wrong, but otherwise, it's a very good match. The shape of the "a" and the distance and placement next to the "p" is also very close. 

In a formal letter from 1598 I found a very nice match for the "ed" ending:

I haven't yet found an example of "friend" spelled "ffrind". Neville often spelled the word "freend" and usually didn't write it with a double-"f" -- though that style of "ff" appears often in Neville's handwriting. The world-final "d" is similar to how he writes it in his formal letters (see "and" and "kind" above):

Who was B: M:?

What is most intriguing are the "B: M:". First of all, no one has any idea who "B: M:" refers to. Knowing that, of course, might help resolve the mystery of the inscription.

The "B" looks like a "23". This was a common way of writing the letter. As you can see below, Henry Neville wrote the letter in a similar way. The shape of the "2" along with the base that flares from left to right plus the bottom tip of the "3" just touching the base of the "2" are common to the inscription and several of the examples of Henry Neville's handwriting. The main discrepancy is the lack of a loop on the "3". That was an extremely uncommon feature, and may just be do to the fact that this was an stylized inscription, and not the everyday handwriting of the inscriber:

I am preparing a control set of 23-"B" examples so we can see what types were common at the time and how unusual the above correspondence is. 

Comparing the capital M and C

Henry Neville had the habit of writing the names of the senders on the back of letters he received. Here are some examples from around 1608:

This example from 1610 is a bit hard to see, but the "M" in "Mr." and "May" are almost a perfect match for the inscription:

This appears to have been a letter form Henry Neville adopted later in life.

On November 12, 1606 Henry Neville received a letter from Laurence Chaderton, the tutor of Jonathan Trelawny, Henry Neville's nephew by marriage. On the back of the letter, Neville wrote:

The "M" is pretty close for the "M" above, but more interestingly, the capital "C" also has a shape somewhat similar to the large "C" on the inscription; far from a perfect match, but the closest I have found so far, and at least suggestive of the larger version. The formation of the two seems to be similar:

Overly Simple "r"

The "r" in "very" and "approued" in the inscription is different from the way that Henry Neville usually wrote his "r". I was able to find an example of "very" written by Henry Neville that has a similar-looking "r". The examples with the blue underline are from the inscription and the one in red is Henry Neville's handwriting:

In a draft letter I have also found several examples of Henry Neville writing an "r" that is much more similar to the style of the Sonnets inscription:

Here is the exact same letter formation, with an "r" that looks like a "v", I have underlined it in red:

Here is another example from 1604:

All of these are consistent with the inscription. 

Examining the September 1608 Letter to Julius Caesar

The above comparisons have been with Henry Neville's letters taken over a 15+ year period. I've tried to find the best matches, taking words from different letters.

Here, I would like instead to take just one letter, written to Julius Caesar, Chancellor and Under Treasurer of the Exchequer, on September 24, 1608. The date is close to the publication of the Sonnets in 1609, so it should be a good comparison. Here is the letter, I took this photo at the Berkshire Record Office:

This letter is written in Henry Neville's "formal secretary"  handwriting; the inscription is perhaps in a bit more formal style. So there are strong consistencies but some differences. The matches here are less precise, but the overall impression is very strong. Here I compare the top line of the inscription with the letter:

Examining the 1600 letter to Robert Cecil

This letter from 1600 is written in Henry Neville's "super formal" style. He sometimes used this style in situations like these, where he was writing a letter of reference for someone. It is reproduced here with permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House.

Here are the comparisons. Note that this formal style has a different "e" and "h" than shown in the 1608 letter and shown on the transcription. Henry Neville varied these letters depending on the formality of the correspondence. So there are some obvious differences here in letter formation, but those are just variations in Henry Neville's handwriting:

Less formal letter to Robert Cecil from 1600

Here is another letter from 1600 to Robert Cecil in a less formal handwriting:

The correspondences are quite impressive, taken as a whole, but you can also see the variability within a single letter:

Control Samples - Overview

Now I will begin comparing control samples. Henry Neville wrote in a well-polished standard secretary hand and the Sonnets inscription was written in a well-polished standard secretary hand. One might think therefore that "anyone could have written it," but that is a mistake. Many people wrote in a well-polished standard secretary hand, but most did not and could not. So that alone excludes most people from possibly having written the inscription. Only someone with outstanding handwriting skills could have written the inscription.

That said, it makes no sense to compare the inscription with people's italic handwriting or extremely messy or non-standard secretary hand. Instead, I will compare it with good examples of professional-looking secretary writing from the period. It is more important to examine a few good controls than to compare against a wide cross-section of samples, since most handwriting samples aren't even close to a match.

Please note, even if you go through something like State Papers Online or Cecil Papers which have professionally written letters only 1/5 of them are anything close in style to the ones I will look at below. Most are written in italic, unpracticed secretary hand, or a secretary hand that is so idiosyncratic it isn't even passably similar to the Sonnets inscription and Henry Neville's handwriting.

Control Sample 1

This is good control sample because an extremely high resolution image of the letter is on the Folger Website. It probably was written out by a secretary. The handwriting is very similar in style and letter formation to Henry Neville's handwriting. Here is the body of the letter; I have circled the relevant sections:

The first line of the letter has similar wording to the inscription. "my very hearty commendations" is similar to "commendations to my very kind" on the inscription. Henry Neville used both "very hearty commendations" and "very kind commendations" in his letters; this was very common phrasing:

The first thing to notice is the spelling of "very". I have underlined it above in blue. Henry Neville, as far as I have seen, invariably spelled it "very", but this control sample has it spelled "verie". So that is one big, important difference from the Sonnets inscription. The letter formation is also completely different from the Sonnets inscription:

Beyond the spelling, the "v" is completely different as is the "e" and the "r". Of course, Henry Neville varied how he wrote those letters too, and I can show you examples of letters where he writes "very" closer to the Control Sample 1 than the inscription. But usually he wrote "very" in a similar way to the inscription, and as I said, as far as I know, always with a "y". 

Compare "comendacons".  The spelling is the same, and those two marks above the word in Control 1 are likely abbreviation marks. But they are a completely different style from the inscription. As I mentioned above, Henry Neville didn't usually use abbreviation marks, but he did occasionally, and they match the shape of the one on the inscription.

Of course, the "e" in "comendacons" in Sample 1 above is completely different from the inscription (Henry Neville used both types of "e"). The "d" though is more importantly different. The shape is different, there is no discernible loop, and the "n" and d" are not connected. The letter appears to be formed in a completely different way from the inscription. If you look through Control 1, the writer repeats that same style of word-medial "d". So that is a strong mismatch.

Compare the "my" in the inscription to the "my" in Control 1 with Henry Neville:

Though the "y" and the line coming off the "y" is similar enough in all samples, Henry Neville's "m" seems to be a much closer match with much distinct and defined humps.

Control 1 has two examples of the "23"-style capital B. Compare them with the inscription on the left and two examples from Neville on the right:

Note how the inscription and Henry Nevile have a long and exaggerated based for the "2". Control 1 lacks that and has a clear separation between the "2" and "3". The inscription and Neville's samples connect them. Of course, the inscription has a loop on the "3" and I have not yet found an example of Neville making a "B" with such a loop; that is a discrepancy between Neville and the inscription.

Here are some comparisons of "and":

Note how Control 1 really has a completely unformed initial "a". The inscription and Henry Neville has much better formed "a" even though they share a line going over it.

Look at this example again, taken from a single letter written by Henry Neville in 1600. It is a *much* closer match for the Sonnets inscription than Control 1, even though overall, Control 1 and this letter have very similar style of handwriting:

Control Sample 2

Control Sample 2 was written by John Packer to Henry Neville in 1600. Packer was one of Neville's secretaries in France and continued to work for him for several years after. An incredibly able man, he rose to prominence later. You can read about him in the History of Parliament.

Henry Neville and the scribe of Control Sample 1 wrote in standard secretary hand. Packer wrote in a more idiosyncratic style. I think examining his letter will be enlightening:

Control Sample 2 has "very" in a very similar way to Sample 1, and completely different from the inscription (on top), though it is spelled with a "y". The "v" and "e" are of a different style and shape:

Sample 2 has a "23"-style capital B that is so stylized it is hard to even recognize; it is nothing like the one on the inscription. The word is "Besides" and I have underlined the "B":

"my" seems like a reasonably good match for the inscription, though the "y" is a little under-formed in comparison to both Neville's handwriting ant the two examples in the inscription:

"k" seems to be quite different however:

Control Sample 3

Control Sample 3 is also from the Folger Library. It is from a notebook from around 1601; it's the copy of a letter. The handwriting is quite distinctive and obviously too wavy to be similar to the Sonnets inscription, but there are some other characteristics I'd like to examine. Except for the waviness, the letter formation is similar to Henry Neville's:

Compare the "very" with the inscription to Sample 3:

Even though the "e" is the same style, the word is spelled differently, with a second "e" at the end, and the "v" is of a completely different shape. Since the "y" is not word-final in this case, it's difficult to compare with the inscription.

The "and" in Sample 3 varies a good deal, but it is another example where it's obviously not a match:

It's interesting to note how the the the "a" is sometimes under-formed like in Sample 1 and how the line above it sometimes curves back upon itself.

There are several abbreviation marks which are quite similar to the ones we examined from Henry Neville above:

The word "comende" above gives us a chance to compare with "comendacons" from the inscription. Note how different the 'd" is. The "m" is similar in the first example but quite different in the second two.  

Conclusion

I believe this raises the substantial possibility that Henry Neville did, indeed, write the inscription on the copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets at the Rylands library. I look forward to feedback from experienced paleographers. You can email me kenfeinstein (at sign) gmail com.

Please check out my handwriting analysis of the Northumberland Manuscript.