Why Molière most likely did write his plays.

Area of Science:

• Literary studies
• Computational linguistics
• Stylometry

Background:

• A debate exists regarding the authorship of plays attributed to Molière, with some suggesting Pierre Corneille as the true author.
• This hypothesis gained traction due to advancements in computational linguistics and stylometric analyses.
• The historical context involves a supposedly uneducated actor, Molière, and the established playwright Pierre Corneille.

Purpose of the Study:

• To reassess the Molière authorship debate using state-of-the-art attribution methods.
• To investigate the validity of the Pierre Corneille authorship theory through linguistic analysis.

Main Methods:

• Studied a corpus of comedies in verse from Molière and Corneille's era.
• Employed advanced stylometric techniques, including analysis of lexicon, rhymes, word forms, affixes, morphosyntactic sequences, and function words.
• Utilized computational linguistics for quantitative linguistic feature extraction and comparison.

Main Results:

• Linguistic analysis of Molière's plays revealed no evidence supporting the theory of another author.
• Key linguistic markers such as lexicon, rhyme patterns, and function word usage were consistent with Molière's sole authorship.
• No significant stylistic similarities were found that would link the plays to Pierre Corneille or other contemporary playwrights.

Conclusions:

• The findings do not support the hypothesis that Pierre Corneille authored the plays attributed to Molière.
• Computational linguistic and stylometric analyses confirm Molière's authorship of his dramatic works.
• The debate on Molière's authorship is settled by robust linguistic evidence.