Contrast and Change in the Idiolects of Ben Jonson Characters

Computers and the Humanities33: 221–240, 1999.© 1999Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Contrast and Change in the Idiolects of Ben JonsonCharacters

HUGH CRAIGDepartment of English, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, AustraliaEmail: [email protected]

Abstract. The paper presents the results of a series of Principal Components Analyses of thefrequencies of very common words in the dialogue of characters in plays by Ben Jonson. The firstPrincipal Component in the data, the most important axis of differentiation, proves in each caseto be a spectrum from elaborate, authoritative pronouncements to a dialogue style of reaction andinterchange. Reference to other quantitative studies, literary and otherwise, suggests that a versionof this axis may often be among the most important in stylistic difference generally. In Jonson it hasa chronological aspect – there is a shift over his career from one end to the other – and there is oftensignificant change within the idiolects of his characters as well. Successive segments of Volpone andMosca’s parts (they are protagonist and antagonist ofVolpone, perhaps Jonson’s best-known comedy)change markedly along this axis, beginning far apart but coming by the end of the play to resembleeach other very closely on this measure.

Key words: Ben Jonson, idiolects, Principal Components Analysis

1. Introduction

Counting common words by character in Ben Jonson’s plays produces somestriking contrasts even on a first, casual inspection. The Scrivener inBartholomewFair never saysI; Stephano inEvery Man in his Humourhardly has a sentencewithout one. Humphrey Wasp inBartholomew Fairhas not a singlethou to hisname, while Tucca inPoetasteruses the word more than twice in every hundredhe utters. In his turn Tucca does not utter a single relativewhich, while Tiberius’ssyntax (in the Roman tragedySejanus) abounds in sinewy chains mostly made withits help. Simple as they are, these observations resonate with all the unquantifiabledimensions of characterization: detailed questions of idiolect, issues of satire andhumour, the practices and assumptions of genre. Slightly more involved statis-tics can place these stark contrasts in multiple webs of relationship with otherword-variables, and other character-texts. The statistics of very common wordsthrows up contrasts and groupings with striking, even uncanny, resemblances to theoppositions and affinities which are the common currency of any discussion of theplaywright. The impulse to resolve the connections and suggestive contradictionsis irresistible, even if, in a sceptical spirit, one seeks first of all a simple under-

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lying factor, like a contrast between formal requirements of tragedy and comedy,or the gender balance of adramatis personae, or the difference between largeparts and small, which will reveal the apparently uncanny as in fact banal. Thereremain enough results which cannot be explained by such factors to show that themedium of language bears patterning in such myriad, subtly interconnected, andmultiply redundant forms that counting (a rigorous, if resolutely simple, agent ofanalysis) may uncover structures which are objectively there, unexpected, and yetcomprehensible in familiar literary terms.

2. Principal Components Analysis

To deal with sets of hundreds of characters and multiple word-variables, there arewell-established statistical techniques for highlighting the main trends in tablesof data. The present study relies mainly on Principal Components Analysis, orPCA.1 This is a method for “data reduction,” aiming to find a handful of factorswhich account for most of the variation in a given set of data. The factors are linearcombinations of the original variables, vectors in a multidimensional space. Amongthe myriad patterns of correlation between the variables in a large dataset – patternsof association and opposition – the method isolates the most important, the secondmost important uncorrelated factor, and so on. There are, obviously, difficultiesin labelling the factors which are derived mathematically from the original set.Any label is an act of interpretation, and a matter of individual judgement, as thecalculation of the weightings which are given to each variable is not. Nevertheless,the procedure (which, with the arrival of computers and statistics packages, is nolonger laborious) offers a worthwhile aid to understanding a large set of figures.For each principal component, there is a weighting for each variable. The compo-nents are derived in order of importance, with a figure for the proportion of theoverall variation in the data that each accounts for, so they can be labelled FirstPrincipal Component, Second Principal Component, and so on. Then for eachobservation, for, say, each play or each character part, a score can be calculatedon each component.

3. A PCA of Very Common Words in Jonson Character Texts

In the present case, the observations are counts of the spoken parts of Jonson’scharacters, and the variables frequencies of the commonest words in Jonson’splays overall. There are 214 Jonson characters who speak over 500 words in all(Table I).

If we use counts for the very commonest words (those which each form 1% ormore of Jonson’s total dialogue, and thus yield on average five occurrences evenin the smaller spoken parts in the set) we arrive at a table of eleven word-variablesand 214 observations. Figure 1 shows the weightings for the first two Principal

IDIOLECTS OF BEN JONSON CHARACTERS 223

Figure 1. Weightings of word-variables in a PCA of data from 214 Jonson character texts.Note: (i) = infinitive, (p) = preposition. Axis labels give percentages of total variationaccounted for by each Principal Component.

Components of the correlation matrix of the variables in this table. They accountfor 29% and 15% respectively of the total variance in the matrix.

The First Principal Component, the horizontal axis (the only one to concernus here) opposesthe, of, andand to the pronounsI, you, andmy. The pattern, itseems, is thatthe, of andand tend to be frequent in the same texts, and where theyare frequent,I, youandmyare not, and vice-versa. High frequencies of the definitearticle indicate a concentration of nouns, characteristic in turn of description ornarration. A concentration ofof indicates description in particular, as examplesfrom consecutive short speeches fromThe Staple of Newswill show: “the Newes. . . o’ the time”; “newes of all sorts”; “the Seale of the Office”; “Master of theOffice”; “the governour o’ the Staple” (I.i).2 Andsuggests longer chains of nounsand clauses, and thus exposition. Dialogue with a high proportion of the pronounsto be seen on the right-hand side of the figure, on the other hand, is likely to includea good deal of personal interaction, and to be marked by reflexiveness.

One can also inspect the scores for text samples along any one principalcomponent axis (Figure 2). Here, the horizontal axis is the score for the firstprincipal component, and the vertical axis is the word-total: longer character partsto the top, higher-scoring ones on the component to the right, corresponding tohigh values on the horizontal axis for the variables of Figure 1. Consideration of

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Table I. Jonson characters with over 500 words of dialogue. Note: With word totalsand identifying labels for Figure 2.

The Alchemist(1612 Quarto) The Case is Altered(1609 Quarto)

Face 8383 a1 Count Ferneze 2579

Subtle 7029 a2 Jacques de Prie 2448 c2

Epicure Mammon 3408 Peter Onion 2260

Surly 1505 Juniper 2110

Dol Common 1424 Angelo 1407

Lovewit 1192 Maximilian 1204

Kastril 835 a7 Lord Paulo Ferneze 1048

Ananias 740 a8 Aurelia 858

Tribulation 621 Christophero 820 c9

Drugger 581 Valentine 759

Dapper 532 a11 Chamont 607

Bartholomew Fair(1631 Folio) Catiline (1611 Quarto)

Quarlous 3702 b1 Cicero 8385 d1

Bartholomew Cokes 3615 b2 Catiline 5696 d2

Humphrey Wasp 3494 Fulvia 1686 d3

Adam Overdo 3251 Cethegus 1431

John Littlewit 2619 Cato 1338

Lantern Leatherhead 2190 Caesar 1337

Zeal-of-the-Land Busy 1678 b7 Chorus 1245 d7

Ursula 1678 Curius 1048

Jodan Knockem 1640 Sempronia 821

Whit 1152 Lentulus 796

Ezekiel Edgeworth 1071 Allobroges 619

Scrivener 1022 b12 Sylla’s Ghost 596

Grace Wellborn 889

Winwife 879 Cynthia’s Revels(1601 Quarto)

Dame Purecraft 875 Amorphus 3852 e1

Nightingale 851 Mercury 3218

Bristle 751 Cupid 2287

Trouble-all 567 b18 Crites 2225

Win Littlewit 563 Cynthia 1403

Joan Trash 524 Asotus 1365

Stage-keeper 500 b21 Third Child 1309

Hedon 1086

Anaides 998

Arete 866

Phantaste 865

Moria 757

Philautia 730

Second Child 548


Table I. Continued.

The Devil is an Ass(1640 Folio) Epicoene(1616 Folio)

Fitzdotterel 5970 f1 Truewit 9651 j1

Merecraft 5781 f2 Morose 3800 j2

Wittipol 3970 f3 Clerimont 3482

Pug 2375 Dauphine Eugenie 2376

Satan 1271 Amorous La Fool 1382

Lady Tailbush 1022 Sir John Daw 1264

Manly 871 Thomas Otter 1250

Everill 865 Mistress Otter 1024

Mistress Frances 738 Madam Haughty 969

Engine 686 Cutbeard 888

Gilthead 632 Epicoene 875

Ambler 565

Sir Paul Eitherside 500 The Magnetic Lady(1640 Folio)

Master Compass 5403 k1

Every Man in his Humour(1601 Quarto) Mistress Polish 2385

Thorello 3341 Sir Moth Interest 2212

Musco 3081 Boy 1959

Bobadilla 2817 Doctor Rut 1722

Prospero 2342 Captain Ironside 1229

Doctor Clement 2144 Lady Loadstone 912

Lorenzo junior 2141 Master Practice 842

Cob 2032 Master Bias 800

Lorenzo senior 1956 Sir Diaph. Silkworm 746

Stephano 1589 g9 Master Damplay 685

Matheo 1348 Parson Palate 667

Giuliano 1121 Mistress Keep 655

Biancha 568 g12 Master Needle 653

Master Probee 650

Every Man out of his Humour(1600 Quarto)

Carlo Buffone 6208 i1 The New Inn(1631 Folio)

Macilente 5686 i2 Goodstock 4693 l1

Fastidius Brisk 4000 i3 Lovel 4574 l2

Puntarvolo 3100 Frances 2325

Cordatus 2740 Prudence 2309

Sogliardo 2396 Sir Glorious Tipto 1616

Fungoso 2050 Lord Beaufort 991

Deliro 1697 Fly 964

Sordido 1637 Prologue 591 l8

Fallace 1483 Nurse 573

Asper 1472 Lord Latimer 560

Shift 1135

Mitis 1121

Saviolina 524

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Table I. Continued.

Poetaster(1602 Quarto) The Staple of News(1631 Folio)

Tucca 4376 m1 Peniboy junior 4283 p1

Crispinus 2404 Peniboy senior 3656 p2

Horace 2370 Peniboy canter 2470

Publius Ovid 1961 Picklock 1911

Augustus Caesar 1757 Gossip Mirth 1237 p5

Tibullus 1542 Lickfinger 1193

Chloe 1252 Thomas Barber 1143 p7

Virgil 1049 Fitton 1142

Julia 924 Cymbal 1093

Albius 842 Gossip Tattle 752

Cornelius Gallus 781 Shunfield 667

Lupus 756 Broker 663

Marcus Ovid 579 Almanack 654

Cytheris 544 Madrigal 592

Envy 503 Pecunia 529

Gossip Censure 516 p16

Sejanus(1605 Quarto)

Sejanus 5300 n1 The Tale of a Tub(1640 Folio)

Tiberius 4023 n2 Tobias Turf 3177

Arruntius 3049 Squire Tub 2468

Silius 2033 Basket Hilts 2418

Macro 1812 Ball Puppy 2026

Sabinus 1509 Chanon Hugh 1799

Terentius 970 Lady Tub 1715

Lepidus 779 In-and-In Medlay 1650

Eudemus 704 Justice Preamble 1081

Latiaris 588 Miles Metaphor 1043

Dame Sybil Turf 828

The Sad Shepherd(1640 Folio) Mistress Audrey Turf 768 q11

Eglamour 1298 Rasi. clench 560

Marian 1173

Maudlin 1171 Volpone(1607 Quarto)

Robin Hood 854 Mosca 6811 r1

Alken 636 o5 Volpone 6445 r2

Amie 556 Corvino 2448

Prologue 550 Sir Politic Would-be 2284

Voltore 1432

Lady Would-be 1392

Peregrine 1300

Corbaccio 721 r8

Nano 671

First Avocatore 607


Figure 2. Scores on first principal component and word-totals for 214 Jonson characters.Note: See Table I for a key to labels.

the composition of the two extreme groups, bearing in mind the outlying word-variable markers in Figure 1, allows for further interpretation of what lies behindthe differences in frequencies identified by the first principal component.3

The characters at the left, thethe-of-and end, are those given to generalpronouncements, where critics and choric figures overlap with puritan zealots.They are the Scrivener already mentioned, the Stage-keeper, and Zeal-of-the-LandBusy from Bartholomew Fair(b12, b21, and b7), Thomas Barber and GossipsMirth and Censure fromThe Staple of News(p7, p5, and p16), the Chorus fromCatiline (d7), Alken fromThe Sad Shepherd(o5), Ananias fromThe Alchemist(a8), and the Prologue fromThe New Inn(l8). Alken is described in thedramatispersonaeof The Sad Shepherdas “The Sage”; he may stand for those at thisend of the scale who focus on distant objects to the entire neglect of the humanand immediate. To be low on this axis may mean pomposity as well authorita-tiveness: differences between those who pronounce where it is appropriate to doso (a Chorus, a Prologue, a Sage) and those who make themselves ridiculousby preaching in the midst of ordinary converse (the Puritans) are suppressed informing a single index of impersonality and formality.

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Characters at the extreme right-hand end of the figure are characterised bymyopic egotism: rustics, simpletons, gulls, and a self-intoxicated courtesan. Theyare Stephano (already noted for his copious use ofI) and Biancha, both fromEvery Man in his Humour(g9 and g12), Trouble-all fromBartholomew Fair(b18),Corbaccio fromVolpone(r8), then Dapper and Kastril fromThe Alchemist(a11 anda7), Jacques de Prie and Christophero fromThe Case is Altered(c2 and c9), AudreyTurf from The Tale of a Tub(q11), and Fulvia fromCatiline (d3). Stephano’s Folioincarnation is described in thedramatis personaeas “A Country Gull”; he may beallowed to stand for this pole of Jonson’s characterisation. His response to Lorenzojunior’s “How fare you” in Act I, scene ii has a good representation of pronounslike I andyou from the right side of Figure 2: “The better for your asking, I willassure you. I haue beene all about to seeke you; since I came I saw mine vncle; &ifaith how haue you done this great while? Good Lord, by my troth I am glad youare well, cousin.”

Looking more generally at the distribution of characters along the axis, achronological aspect is evident. Characters from the early plays tend to be at theright-hand, self-oriented end, those from the late plays and the Roman tragediestend to fall at the left-hand, world-oriented end, and those from middle-periodplays tend to be widely dispersed along the axis. Figure 2 identifies by symbolentries from an early play (Every Man in his Humour), a late play (The NewInn) and two Jacobean plays (The AlchemistandBartholomew Fair) to show thepattern of distribution according to period. Character texts fromEvery Man in hisHumour(hollow triangles) fall in the right half of the plot;The New Innones (blacktriangles), though more widely scattered, are in middling and left-hand areas. Yetthe Alchemistcharacter texts (stars), and theBartholomew Fairones (circles),are widely scattered, both contributing to the high- and the low-scoring charactergroups already discussed. Jonson may have shifted over his career towards world-oriented and away from self-oriented dialogue, but there was a period also whenhe included extreme examples of both types in a single play.4

In Bartholomew Fair, for one, Jonson explored the full range of the spectrumwhich emerges in his plays overall from personal to impersonal character styles. Asalready noted, the circles are scattered all over the lower part of the plot in Figure2.5 A closer look at two characters at opposite ends of the axis gives an idea of howthis comes about. The circle at the right-hand end (b18) is the madman Trouble-all.Trouble-all holds fast to a simple axis of self and other: “I do only hope you hauewarrant, for what you doe, and so, quit you, and so, multiply you” (IV.i); “here I’lestay you, I’le obey you, and I’le guide you presently” (IV.ii). This preoccupationgives rise to high counts of bothI andyou: each separately accounts for over 6%of his dialogue, which compares to a mean for all 214 characters of 2.7% forI,2.3% foryou. There are three circles to the left-hand extreme of the axis. For twoof them, the Scrivener and the Stage-keeper, an eccentric idiolect is explained bytheir limited dramatic functions; the third, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy (b7), is a largercharacter, with over 1,500 words, and is near them for quite different reasons.


However egotistic in terms of action, his speech is low onI (at just over 2%):as a caricature Puritan, his character-note, after all, is the fraudulent representationof individual desires as doctrinal imperatives. Generalizing and objectifying in themanner of the preacher means exceptionally high counts ofof and the. He muststeel himself against “the vanity of the eye, or the lust of the palat” (I.vi), “theharlot o’ the sea” and “the Tents of the vncleane” (III.ii), and against “the maliceof the enemy” (IV.vi). As he strives for grandiose effects his elaborations give riseto a high count ofand, too: a hobby-horse is “an Idoll, a very Idoll, a feirce andrancke Idoll” (III.vi); lists in Latin are “the very rags of Rome, and patches ofPoperie” (IV.vi).The Alchemisthas a similar pair of opposites on the axis: Kastril,a country bumpkin who comes to Subtle to learn to quarrel (in Figure 2, a7, sixthfrom the right), and Ananias, another preacherly Puritan (a8, ninth from the left).

The vector takes account of data from all 214 characters, not from just afew idiosyncratic cases, and it is worth considering further what it tells us aboutJonson’s less extreme (and more extensive) characters. Figure 2 labels those with3,500 words or more. Three pairs of characters from Jonson’s Jacobean plays forma suggestive pattern in the graph. Sejanus and Tiberius inSejanus(n1, n2), Moscaand Volpone inVolpone(r1, r2), and Face and Subtle inAlchemist(a1, a2) are allpartnerships between a wily subordinate and his superior which later turns into astruggle for mastery.6 The relationships of antagonist and protagonist, responderand proposer, are reflected in the subordinate (but larger) part in each case being tothe right (i.e., higher on the First Principal Component). Some caution in interpre-tation is in order, since the differences are not extreme. Moreover, where (as withFace and Subtle) both members of a pair occupy middling positions along the axis,the difference may be too small to matter much. Nevertheless, there is an interestingpattern across the three pairs. Those who begin as masters, Tiberius, Volpone andSubtle, are all more given to pronouncements about the world than their offsiders,who are more concerned than they are with the personal and the immediate, neces-sarily responding more than pontificating. Tiberius’s part (n2), indeed, is the outlierto the left among the larger character-parts in Figure 2. His dialogue is so abstract,creating so much of a world unto itself, that intervening in the action from far awayby means of an elaborate letter, as he does at the end, is only a logical extension ofhis style throughout. Bartholomew Cokes fromBartholomew Fair(b2) at the farright, the outlier on that side among the larger characters, is so empty-headed, sopreoccupied with the immediate and the material, that he is barely distinguishablefrom the cantankerous puppets who perform at the end of his play.

4. Context

How are we to understand a finding that a continuum between highly personaland highly impersonal styles is the most important one in a collection of countsof Jonson characters on eleven very common words? One might be tempted toassociate this feature with Jonson’s individual dramaturgy, if it were not that similar

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vectors have emerged in other studies of common words in authorial charactergroups. Tomoji Tabata’s work on twenty-four characters from Dickens’ChristmasBooksuses the same statistical procedure as the present study. He found a secondprincipal component in his data set which he suggests is a contrast between “theimpersonal, descriptive, and disquisitory style and the personal, subjective, andplain style” (p. 114). He used a larger set of words than the eleven of Figure 1 – thethirty most common in theChristmas Booksoverall – but his words plot shows thatthe weightings of the word-variables common to the present study are remarkablysimilar: in(p), the, of, andand at the impersonal end are opposed toI andyou atthe personal one (compare Tabata, graph 2, and Figure 1, above). (There are alsodifferences:my, for instance, is at the impersonal end of Tabata’s second vector.)7

More generally still, Douglas Biber has defined a dimension of “Informationalversus Involved Production” in contemporary English. It emerged as the mostimportant factor of differentiation among texts in his study, based on a FactorAnalysis of various linguistic variables in a large, mixed corpus. Biber sums upthe dimension as

marking high informational density and exact informational content versusaffective, interactional, and generalized content. Two separate communica-tive parameters seem to be involved here: (1) the primary purpose of thewriter/speaker: informational versus interactive, affective, and involved; and(2) the production circumstances: those circumstances characterized by carefulediting possibilities, enabling precision in lexical choice and a generallyfragmented presentation of information. (p. 107)

At one extreme of the dimension are found conversation and personal letters,at the other official documents and academic prose (p. 128). Biber’s variablesin this study are more various than simple word-frequencies – he counts nouns,prepositional phrases,that-deletions and so on – so the factors he identifies areharder to compare precisely with the principal components of a graph like Figure3. Yet where there is overlap in the variables there are some striking similarities.The first and second-person pronouns, for instance, have large negative weights inBiber’s “Factor 1,” indicating an association with what he calls “highly interactivediscourse” (p. 105). Likewise,I andyouare among the most important in formingthe first principal component of Figure 1, above, at the personal end of what hasbeen interpreted here as a personal-impersonal axis.8

It would be prudent to conclude, therefore, that this polarity in Jonson characterdialogue is more like a fundamental linguistic dimension than an authorial charac-teristic. In the dialogue of literary characters, as in texts in English in general, thereare lines of differentiation in styles among which the authoritative and elaboratedversus the interactive and informal is prominent. Its importance in quantitativeterms relative to the total variation in the data suggests that it must play a partin the process of composition, and must figure in the experience of reading orhearing these texts, though the work of defining a model for the relations betweenthe statistical and the literary in such cases has scarcely begun.


Figure 3. Weightings of word-variables in a PCA of data from ninety-five Jonson charactertexts. Note: (a) = adjective, (ad) = adverb of degree, (c) = conjunction, (d) = demonstrative,(i) = infinitive, (p) = preposition, (r) = relative, (tp) = true plural, (v) = verb.

5. Characters in Segments

Dealing with whole characters, as has been done here so far, gives an overall pictureof their dispositions along the various axes which are defined, but may conceal oraverage out some interesting variations within their spoken dialogue. When a givencharacter appears in the graphs somewhere near the middle on an axis, for instance,it may be there as a combination of some extreme and opposite portions rather thanbecause of a consistent middling tendency or a general failure to register with thepattern of strong markers for the vector. There are a number of Jonson characterswith parts large enough to yield two or more segments or smaller portions for multi-variate study through frequencies of the very common words, so that differenceswithin a character’s dialogue can be explored.

If a minimum size for the segments of 2,000 words is set, more of the lessfrequent common words can be used. There are in fact sixty word-variables whicheach account for 0.25% or more of the total dialogue of this set of texts, and sowill occur on average five times or more in each text segment. Figure 3 showsthe weightings for these variables on the first two principal components in a newPCA using ninety-five character segments. The segments follow arbitrary divisions,words one to 2,000 of a character’s dialogue, and so on (Table III[i]).

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Table II. Dispersion of Jonson character segments along a first principal component. Note: Thedifference between the highest and lowest scores within each character group on the first principalcomponent was found, and expressed as a percentage of the total range on the component for allcharacters and character segments.

Character N of segments % of total range

Volpone 3 45

Truewit 4 39

Subtle 3 38

Mosca 3 30

Compass 2 24

Fitzdotterel 2 22

Face 4 21

Catiline 2 17

Cicero 4 14

Carlo Buffone 3 14

Macilente 2 11

Goodstock 2 11

Merecraft 2 10

Tucca 2 9

Tiberius 2 7

Lovel 2 6

Sejanus 2 4

Fastidius Brisk 2 2

Peniboy junior 2 0

Once again, the spectrum in the first principal component is from styles with apreponderance of description (suggested byand and their to the left) to dialogueinvolving close interaction (characterised by high frequencies ofcome, I, andwill(v) to the right). It is another member of the family of disquisitory-interlocutoryprincipal components.

In this analysis, the segments of the characters are treated as independent textsamples, as free as the whole characters are to find their positions along the vectorswhich are themselves calculated by treating all ninety-five observations in exactlythe same way. If parts of a character have similar scores they must indeed have agood deal in common in terms of these indexes. Conversely, character segmentswith widely divergent scores indicate considerable changes in very common worduse in the course of a speaking part.9 Table II represents an attempt to consol-idate the information the PCA yields about the spread of character segments. Itis based on the idea that the dispersion can be roughly measured by comparingthe spread within the segments for each character with the spread of the entire


Figure 4. Rolling segments of Volpone and Mosca dialogue. Note: See Table III forbeginnings and endings of segments.

ninety-five characters and character segments. The characters listed in the table,the nineteen Jonson characters with 4,000 words or more, appear in descendingorder of combined percentages of their own range against the overall range on thefirst principal component.10

6. Volpone and Mosca

Volpone appears at the top of Table II: not the largest character – he has threesegments – but with the widest range of scores. Mosca is not far behind, in fourthposition. The analysis is based on a segmentation according to the first 2,000 wordsspoken by each, the second 2,000, and so on.

To explore this result a little further, a fresh analysis can be made with thesame set of word-variables used in Figure 3, but with data collected in “rollingsegments”: the first segment being a character’s first word to his or her 2,000th, thesecond, overlapping one, his or her words 1,001 to 3,000, and so on. This yieldsfive segments instead of three, while each is still 2,000 words long, and makes iteasier to see turning-points in terms of the action of the play (Figure 4).

Volpone’s second segment is to the left of the first, but the progression afterthat is steadily to the right.11 The axis is essentially the same one that formsthe horizontal axis of Figure 3, already labelled as a differentiation between thedisquisitory (to the left) and the interlocutory (to the right). Volpone, it seems,

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Table III. Segmentation of Volpone and Mosca character texts. Note: Act, scene, line refer-ences are as inThe Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, ed. G. A. Wilkes (4 vols; Oxford:Clarendon, 1981).

First word no. Last word no. Word total First word Last word

reference reference

(i) Three consecutive segments from each (initial analysis)

Volpone A 1 2000 2000 1.1.1 2.2.132

Volpone B 2001 4000 2000 2.2.132 3.7.199

Volpone C 4001 6445 2445 3.7.199 Epilogue. 6

Mosca A 1 2000 2000 1.1.28 1.4.40

Mosca B 2001 4000 2000 1.5.40 3.5.29

Mosca C 4001 6811 2811 3.5.29 5.12.115

(ii) Five rolling segments from each, advancing by 1000 words a time (Figure 4 refers)

Volpone i 1 2000 2000 1.1.1 2.2.132

Volpone ii 1001 3000 2000 1.4.155 2.4.11

Volpone iii 2001 4000 2000 2.2.132 3.7.199

Volpone iv 3001 5000 2000 2.4.12 5.3.17

Volpone v 4001 6445 2445 3.7.198 Epilogue.6

Mosca i 1 2000 2000 1.2.28 1.4.40

Mosca ii 1001 3000 2000 1.4.13 2.6.58

Mosca iii 2001 4000 2000 1.5.40 3.5.29

Mosca iv 3001 5000 2000 2.6.58 4.4.17

Mosca v 4001 6811 2811 3.5.29 5.12.155

(iii) Three segments from each with common boundaries (Figure 5 refers)

Volpone a 1 2000 2000 1.1.1 2.2.132

Volpone b 2001 4374 2374 2.2.132 3.8.19

Volpone c 4375 6445 2071 3.9.63 Epilogue. 6

Mosca a 1 2547 2547 1.1.28 2.2.22

Mosca b 2548 4547 2000 2.4.1 3.9.16

Mosca c 4548 6811 2264 3.9.16 5.12.115

becomes first more disquisitory, but then progressively more interlocutory as theplay continues.

For the first part of Volpone’s first 2,000 words his main role is as Mosca’spatron: he says little while playing the part of the bedridden but immensely wealthymagnifico. As patron he can be calmly authoritative, as he is about the attentionsof the suitors who are seeking to be his heir:


All which I suffer, playing with their hopes,And am content to coyne them into profit,To looke upon their kindnesse, and take more,And looke on that; still, bearing them in hand,Letting the cherry knock against their lips. . . (I.i)

If not exactly passive, he is nevertheless assiduously calm, with an aristocraticdisdain for exertion and overt self-assertion. His second rolling segment, whichruns from late in I.iv to the early part of II.iv, is dominated by his bravura speechesin disguise as the mountebank Scoto, which are all included in it (Table III[ii]).This latter adventure, by this measure, is an extension of his early disposition topronouncements and declarations, rather than the beginning of his journey towardsinteraction and close verbal combat. The turning point is between “Volpone ii”and “Volpone iii.” This is the moment when Volpone abandons his Scoto role andthrows himself on Mosca’s mercy as procurer of Celia, the wife of one of thesuitors (II.iii–iv). In the confrontations with Lady Would-be and with Celia thatfollow, Volpone is suddenly dependent on others – for rescue or for the grantingof sexual favours – and his style begins its journey towards its end point as heavyuser ofI andwill(v), marks of desperate self-assertion rather than assurance andauthority. The third segment takes in the last part of the seduction scene, and thenVolpone is in full cry as the tormentor of the suitors, and as the fox at bay. Hisprogress through the segments is charted by instances ofyou. They are rare inthe first segment, occurring in a few polite responses to suitors (Mosca at thisstage is generally “thou”): “You giue sir what you can” (I.iii). There are moreas the huckster Scoto woos his audience (II.ii), and then to Lady Would-be theycome in a rush: “Oh, if you doe loue me, / No more . . . ”; “You will not drinke,and part?” (III.iii). Thecomandadorewho pretends to congratulate the suitors ontheir good fortune (Volpone’s last disguise) uses still more: “O! belike you are theman, / Signior Coruino? ’faith, you carry it well; / You grow not mad withall . . . ”(V.vi). By the end of the play Mosca is no longer the servant but plainly a rivalin a desperate struggle, as the second-person pronouns show. Volpone (speakingas himself) resolves that his goods will not make Mosca’s fortune, “shall not glewyou, / Nor screw you, into a Family” (V.xii). The scatter of his segments, then,tracing changes in the pattern of use of the very common words, serves to highlightVolpone’s changes of role, from the stiff, languid aristocrat to the presumptuous(and mocking) underling and then the no-holds-barred competitor.

The analysis allows us to plot changes in the pattern for his fellow-conspirator,Mosca, on the same map. In Figure 4 “Mosca ii” is very close to “Mosca i,”suggesting that the changes bringing “Mosca iii” to the left are concentrated inMosca’s fourth thousand words. The segment is still only middling in terms of thepersonal-impersonal vector, but some changes from earlier passages are evident tothe reader in Mosca’s speech style. We may begin to trace the connections betweenthe pattern of Figure 4 and such changes by looking at frequencies of a singleword-variable likethe. These cannot explain the variations in Figure 4, since all

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the variables appearing in Figure 3 play a part, but they do help to show somethingof the underlying stylistic patterns. Mosca is expansive to Corvino about Volponein a new way at the end of Act I, where the segment begins. Elaborate referenceto the present but apparently insensate Volpone is nothing new, but with CorvinoMosca has an unfamiliar authority and finality:

Corv. Has he children?Mos. Bastards,Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars,Gipseys, and Iewes, and Black-moores, when he was drunke.Knew you not that Sir? it is the common fable.The Dwarfe, the Foole, the Eunuch are all his;He is the true father of his familie. . . (I.v)

Such a speech can be compared with Mosca’s breathless report to Voltore earlierof Volpone’s discourse on lawyers (I.iii), where the particularity of the relationmeans no use at all ofthe (or of or, another left-hand marker, for that matter).Mosca has a new tinge of authority in his description of Celia to Volpone, too,which brings more instances ofthe: he calls her “the wonder, / The blazing Starreof Italy; a wench / Of the first yeare” (I.v). His soliloquy at the beginning of Act IIIis the high point of his confidence, and occasions more extravagant statements withaccompanying definite articles: he exults in his perfection as parasite, “the creature,had the art borne with him” (III.i). Protesting his innocence to Bonario shortlyafterwards, his style naturally modulates, but the new tendency to generalize, thenew note of formality, is still there. Claiming the authority of virtue seems to bringthe definite article with it: “for the pure love, which I bear all right, / And hatred ofthe wrong, I must reueale it,” he declares (III.ii).

Third segments of Volpone’s and Mosca’s parts converge from opposite sidesof the plot to a similar position on the first axis, though with this segmentationthe dialogue involved is from different points in the play (Table III[ii]). Theirfourth and fifth segments move sharply right, with Mosca’s fifth finding a posi-tion beyond that of Volpone’s. In travelling in this direction they are followinga strong tendency in Jonson’s characters: in seventeen of the nineteen charactergroups, the last segment is the highest-scoring of all on this axis. The early parts ofJonson plays contain more exposition, one might hypothesise, the later ones moreintense and personal interchange. This may well be a pattern in Renaissance dramagenerally. It was apparent in a sample of Renaissance tragedies by various authorsincluded in an earlier study: according to Burrows and Craig (1994), Renaissancetragedies are distinguishable from Romantic ones by the interlocutory quality oftheir concluding acts.

Volpone and Mosca are remarkable all the same among Jonson characters forthe degree to which segments of the same character are separated from each other(Table II). Mosca’s zig-zag removes the temptation to ascribe this internal variationto systematic change in characters conceived of as beings capable of growth ordecay in moral terms. The differences that are identified must relate more to imme-


diate dramaturgic developments: who is being addressed, the kind of scenes thecharacters find themselves in, the dominant or subservient roles they are playing,and so on.12 Some Jonson characters (like Peniboy junior fromThe Staple of Newsand Fastidius Brisk fromEvery Man out of his Humour) have a strong force-field ofegotism around them, so that they are unresponsive to any exigencies of situation,and are as interlocutory at the beginning as they are at the end. The low rankingof some characters fromSejanusin dispersion on the first principal component,despite their being involved in intense intrigues – Sejanus is at No. 17, Tiberius atNo. 15 in Table II – may well reflect the more static nature of the play.Volponeswings more wildly from moments of rest and reflection to furious action, and thedevice of disguise releases the potential in characters for abrupt changes in dialoguestyle. To explain these differences is not to explain them away, however. The chartof the Volpone and Mosca segments is, when all is said and done, a diagram of themain action of the play, representing with stark simplicity the starting points of thetwo main characters, patron and parasite, poles apart, and the wild swings whichfollow as their confidence trick gathers its own momentum and then hurries themtowards a desperate struggle for survival and an exchange of costumes which isnonetheless never entirely a change of places.

The intriguing relationship between the progress of successive parts of the twocharacter-texts suggest a slightly different approach to segmentation, this timeusing the same boundaries for the segments, so that more direct comparisons arepossible. Table III(iii) shows how this has been done, keeping all segments to aminimum of 2,000 words, while each ends at the same stage in the play. Figure5 plots the scores for the six segments arrived at in this way. The analysis is anew one, but with word-variables as in Figure 3, and with the same eighty-ninesegments of character parts other than Volpone and Mosca included. As before,these other segments have helped form the principal components of the analysis,but are omitted from the chart to highlight the variations within the dialogue of thetwo Volponecharacters.

The new divisions reduce the scatter of Mosca’s segments – “Mosca b” is hardlydifferent at all from “Mosca a” on the horizontal axis – and bring “Mosca c”and “Volpone c” to almost exactly the same point on that axis. When the playrather than the character texts themselves provides the boundaries, then, thereis evidence that Mosca and Volpone in the final stage are equally involved ininteraction rather than speechmaking. The last segments in this division begin alittle way into III.ix, the last scene of the act, so take in the whole of Acts IV (inwhich Volpone in fact does not appear) and V. Having begun with such a differentbalance between statement and response, Volpone more often pronouncing, Moscaworking though manipulation, the play’s action brings them to level pegging wellto the interlocutory end of the spectrum. Like the pigs and men of George Orwell’sAnimal Farm, by the end it has become “impossible to tell which was which” onthis measure (Orwell [1975], p. 119).

238 HUGH CRAIG

Figure 5. Segments of Volpone and Mosca dialogue with common boundaries. Note: SeeTable III for beginnings and endings of segments.

7. Conclusion

At the more detailed level, the analysis draws attention first of all to the internaldiversity of some of Jonson’s idiolects. Merecraft and Peniboy junior show littlechange in the course of their plays, but a character like Volpone moves a prodigiousdistance along the primary axis, swimming ahead of a more sluggish general streamin the direction of interaction. In examining the dialogue of Volpone and Mosca thequantitative study of very common words serves the purposes of interpretation byselecting and highlighting. The interaction between the two principals ofVolponeis simplified for the purpose to two related dramatic trajectories along a spectrumof pronouncementsversusresponses, a shifting balance between protagonist andantagonist roles. The high point of Mosca’s confidence and assertiveness is markedout, occurring just as Volpone has begun his own rapid journey from masteryto mere competitiveness. This beginning can be traced to the moment when hediscards his Scoto disguise, the high point of his status as the initiator of the action,and suffers the pangs of desire for Corvino’s wife. Immediately afterwards he istortured by exposure to Lady Would-be, pursues an elaborate and finally brutalseduction of Celia, and moves towards an out-and-out competition with his servant.Volpone and Mosca, patron and parasite, start far apart, but there is by the end littleto distinguish them on the measure which is (in common-words terms) Jonson’skey axis of differentiation for the language of his characters.


More generally, the overlap between the first principal component found hereand components or factors in other multivariate language studies invites furtherconsideration. If the resemblances are genuine, rather than superficial, and if theyare not an artefact of the methods themselves (both areas in which more work isneeded), then they may provide a soundly-based, widely applicable grid on whichto plot patterns of similarity, contrast and change in other language samples. Theabstract space created by the mathematical procedure provides a framework forthe interpretation of chosen sets of texts. Certainly in Jonson character texts theaxis of disquisitory versus interlocutory helps map phases of Jonson’s career, formsrevealing groupings of the characters, and charts striking changes within individualspoken parts in the plays. The numbers are, as always, only aids to understanding,not an end in themselves. They exist to provide glimpses of the restless interactionsof conscious and unconscious shaping forces in language, the shifting accommoda-tions between tradition and innovation, predictability and surprise, which are whatjustify any study of the drama.

Notes1 For a concise treatment, see Chatfield and Collins (1989), pp. 57–81.2 Quotations in the text are from the early printed versions noted in Table I, which were the basis forthe machine-readable texts used for counting. Act and scene divisions follow those in these editions.3 The extremes of any character-text axis might be expected to represent tendencies exaggeratedto the point of caricature, or at least one-sided, one-purpose parts. It is conceivable that a dramaticcharacter might combine extreme idiosyncrasy and a substantial amount of dialogue; but the oddsare that multiplying the situations in which a character participates would balance out some of theeccentricities in dialogue. Narrow speech habits over many thousands of words would risk tedium orimplausibility. The distribution of the entries in Figure 2 confirms this. The scatter of entries is in apyramid shape; on the whole, the larger a character-part is, the more likely it is to appear towards themiddle of the horizontal axis.4 The present data does not permit any answer to the interesting question of whether this was a trendshared with his fellow-dramatists, or not.5 The pattern reminds us that the play has no very large speaking parts, none of the magnitude ofFace and Subtle, the two stars high up.6 In Alchemistand Volpone in particular, the two largest characters dominate the word-totals,providing 58% and 50% respectively of all the word-tokens of their plays. The figure forSejanusis 36%.7 John Burrows’ multivariate analysis of the idiolects of forty-eight Jane Austen characters producesa vector (second in overall importance) which ranges from Harriet Smith ofEmmato William Collinsof Pride and Prejudice. Burrows describes this continuum as

a gradual transformation from garrulousness and intellectual indiscipline, through a middlearea of civil and articulate speech-habits, to formality and dignity, and onward to pomposity.That transformation coincides with a transformation from brief or straggling sentences, highlypersonalized in cast, to . . . composed and impersonal disquisitions . . . (p.132)

This sounds remarkably similar to the principal component of Figure 3, above, and the one alreadycited from Tabata, though Burrows’ method in this instance was to find principal components of amatrix of correlations between the character texts, rather than a matrix of correlations between theword-variables, so that direct comparison is difficult. In his analysis the first principal component

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emerges as a dimension of resemblance or otherwise to the set of characters as a whole, with anoverwhelming proportion of the total variance (see Burrows, graph 14 and p. 131). The secondprincipal component in his analysis is thus broadly equivalent to a first principal component underthe method used in the present study, in which there is no component corresponding to variation fromthe “norm.”8 All second-and third-person pronouns included are positively weighted,weandyour very lightlyso.9 The contextual similarities of parts of the same character’s dialogue, as well as of characters fromthe same play, in fact place some limitations on the freedom of segments and character parts to take uppositions along the axis. Large separations of related segments and characters – such as those amongBartholomew Faircharacters in Figure 2 – are more remarkable, for this reason, than proximities.For a general analysis of the problem, see Hogenraad, McKenzie and Martindale (1997).10 Two limitations should be mentioned. For characters with three or four segments, the measure-ment is of the spread between the two extremes, rather than of the displacements of all the segmentsrelative to each other. The N column in Table II shows how many segments each character yieldsgiven an minimum of 2,000 words for each segment. Three- and four-segment characters are mixedwith two-segment ones. The more segments, the more opportunity there is for dispersion, and thebottom half of the table is almost entirely two-segment characters. The correlation coefficient forN and the percentage of the range gives a “significant” value (0.578, a<1% probability of the nullhypothesis at 17 df). All this reminds us that a really satisfactory measure of dispersion, effectivelycomparing larger characters and smaller, allowing for uneven scatters within a character group, andso on, is difficult to achieve. There is also the further question of whether the spread of 45% forVolpone segments, or 30% for Mosca ones, are absolutely large dispersions or not. This could onlybe answered by establishing a norm across a set of character parts going well beyond a single author.11 Table III(ii) shows the composition of the various segments ofVolponefor this particular analysis.12 Two, three, or even four divisions to a character are too few to give any confidence in detectinga “sustained development” of the kind Burrows, with much longer character-texts, identifies in thedialogue styles of Jane Austen’s heroines (195).

References

Biber, D.Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Burrows, J.F.Computation into Criticism: An Essay of Jane Austen’s Novels and an Experiment in

Method. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.Burrows, J.F. and D.H. Craig. “Lyrical Drama and the ‘Turbid Mountebanks’: Renaissance and

Romantic Tragedy”.CHum28 (1994), 63–86.Chatfield, C. and A. J. Collins.Introduction to Multivariate Analysis. London: Chapman and Hall,

1989.Hogenraad, R., D. P. McKenzie and C. Martindale. “The Enemy Within: Autocorrelation Bias in

Content Analysis of Narratives”.CHum30 (1997), 433–439.Orwell, G.Animal Farm. Ed. F. Ballini. Milan: Signorelli, 1975.Tabata, T. “Characterization in Dickens’sChristmas Books: A Computer-Assisted Approach to

Idiolects”. Kumamoto Studies in English Language and Literature(Kumamoto University) 34(1991), 98–126.

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Contrast and Change in the Idiolects of Ben Jonson Characters