  Function word adjacency networks (WANs) are used to study the authorship of
plays from the Early Modern English period. In these networks, nodes are
function words and directed edges between two nodes represent the relative
frequency of directed co-appearance of the two words. For every analyzed play,
a WAN is constructed and these are aggregated to generate author profile
networks. We first study the similarity of writing styles between Early English
playwrights by comparing the profile WANs. The accuracy of using WANs for
authorship attribution is then demonstrated by attributing known plays among
six popular playwrights. Moreover, the WAN method is shown to outperform other
frequency-based methods on attributing Early English plays. In addition, WANs
are shown to be reliable classifiers even when attributing collaborative plays.
For several plays of disputed co-authorship, a deeper analysis is performed by
attributing every act and scene separately, in which we both corroborate
existing breakdowns and provide evidence of new assignments.
