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by sandworm101 1756 days ago
This analysis appears to be of the modern shakespear text. That can differ from "first folio" versions closest to what was actually performed. The modern text has been sanitized, the poetry cleaned up. I wouldnt dig too deep into specific word counts as they are likely more a result of later rewordings. An extra the here or there may have been added by publishers to perfect the meter. That happens sometimes when a play for the stage starts being sold as a poem to be read in drawing rooms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Folio

1 comments

The First Folio is the only surviving source of the text and more importantly minor edits aren't going to change statistical properties of text much at the counts-of-the-definite-article level.