The numbers from the target play should be compared with those of each of the five Middleton plays individually, not with the averages of those five. The Middleton attribution studies do provide statistical information for each play, but they tend to give undue emphasis to averages. Averages disguise variation in individual plays, and you would need to know the degree of variation in order to make an accurate evaluation. Suppose, for example, that the target play closely matched the averages of the five Middleton plays but did not match any one of them. You could not be sure in that case whether the play was by Middleton or whether, as the product of random statistical variation, it merely resembled Middleton’s plays.
Lastly, as a cross-check, the same procedures should be performed on all other plays by the target play’s alternative author, if there is one. If that study also yielded positive results we still would not know whether the play was by Middleton or by the alternative author. With respect to The Revenger’s Tragedy the alternative author’s sample universe consists only of one play. That is not a sample sufficient to yield reliable results, but the procedure should be performed anyway. We would like to know whether The Revenger’s Tragedy contains not only Middletonian mannerisms, but Tourneurian ones as well.
So what do the existing Middleton attribution studies tell us about authorship of The Revenger’s Tragedy? They tell us that improperly selected Middletonian mannerisms evoked from a flawed sample universe appear more often in that play than they do in Tourneur’s acknowledged Atheist’s Tragedy. If it was late at night, and I had drunk too much wine, and I was listening to Irish music, I might say that the studies suggest the possibility of Middleton’s authorship. But I would also observe that the studies, at least equally plausibly, suggest that Tourneur was an adaptable playwright. The next morning when I was dealing with my hangover I would not be so charitable.
It is hard to believe, of course, that a play as infinitely fascinating as The Revenger’s Tragedy was written by a man who is to us a cypher. So also that the World’s greatest plays—its greatest literary works—were written by an ill-educated countryman from Stratford. Yet the evidence for Shakespeare is overwhelming. The evidence for Tourneur is not quite so conclusive. Objectively considered, however, it continues to say in its current state that Tourneur probably wrote the play.