  Stylometry is mostly applied to authorial style. Recently, researchers have
begun investigating the style of characters, finding that the variation remains
within authorial bounds. We address the stylistic distinctiveness of characters
in drama. Our primary contribution is methodological; we introduce and evaluate
two non-parametric methods to produce a summary statistic for character
distinctiveness that can be usefully applied and compared across languages and
times. Our first method is based on bootstrap distances between 3-gram
probability distributions, the second (reminiscent of 'unmasking' techniques)
on word keyness curves. Both methods are validated and explored by applying
them to a reasonably large corpus (a subset of DraCor): we analyse 3301
characters drawn from 2324 works, covering five centuries and four languages
(French, German, Russian, and the works of Shakespeare). Both methods appear
useful; the 3-gram method is statistically more powerful but the word keyness
method offers rich interpretability. Both methods are able to capture
phonological differences such as accent or dialect, as well as broad
differences in topic and lexical richness. Based on exploratory analysis, we
find that smaller characters tend to be more distinctive, and that women are
cross-linguistically more distinctive than men, with this latter finding
carefully interrogated using multiple regression. This greater distinctiveness
stems from a historical tendency for female characters to be restricted to an
'internal narrative domain' covering mainly direct discourse and
family/romantic themes. It is hoped that direct, comparable statistical
measures will form a basis for more sophisticated future studies, and advances
in theory.
