In an earlier posting I suggested that Spenser's lexical density might be higher
than Shakespeare's.
I've done some simple experiments that confirm this hypothesis. Using WordHoard
data, I selected three 3,000 word sets drawn at random from respectively the Faerie
Queene and the Shakespeare canon.
The three Spenser samples contained 1054, 1042, and 1050 distinct lemmata.
The three Shakespeare samples contained 986, 976, and 972 distinct lemmata.
By this test Spenser's lexical density (35%) is marginally higher than Shakespeare's
(32.5%).
I remember a conversation with Donald Foster quite a few years ago in which he said
that the lexical density of poems is higher than of plays. This makes a lot of
sense, and it would be easy enough to test it. But I'm too lazy to do that right
now. A subtler analysis would distinguish between genres, between verse and prose,
and by time.
|