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Abstract

This article deals with Rolling Delta and Rolling Classify authorship attributions in the apocryphal play Sir Thomas More. Conflicting results were overcome by extracting stable information from the tested range of diverse parameter results of Rolling Delta, and by establishing majority attributions of the text chunks with Rolling Classify. Both approaches were applied to the well-recognized 1911 edition of the play, prepared by W. Greg. This followed the given folio sequence 3a-22a and then made the various additions. Each of the additions was not long enough to establish convincing results as to its authorship, but the folio sequences of the original text could be analysed with larger and reliable window sizes, revealing Samuel Rowley and William Shakespeare as authors. The longstanding claim that Munday or Chettle is the author of the original text of the play proved to be unsustainable. As far as the conventional dating is concerned, an earlier analysis of Thomas of Woodstock, largely written by Rowley, and in part by Shakespeare, points, if later revisions are disregarded, to the period 1592-93.