Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”
I got curious about how all the other plays ranked.  For example, which plays used those words the least?  So I downloaded the text files from the Folger Shakespeare Library (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shakespeare.folger.edu&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;txt&#x2F;shakespeares-works_TXT_FolgerShakespeare.zip" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shakespeare.folger.edu&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;txt&#x2F;shakespeares-wo...</a>) and ran this command to get a rough count of &quot;the&quot; and &quot;th&#x27;&quot; vs. the total words:<p><pre><code>    for f (*.txt); do echo $f; tr &quot; \r&quot; &quot;\n\n&quot; &lt; $f | grep -A100000 ACT | egrep -v &quot;^[A-Z]+$&quot; | grep -i [A-Z] | egrep -i &quot;^th[&#x27;e]$&quot; | wc -l; tr &quot; \r&quot; &quot;\n\n&quot; &lt; $f | grep -A100000 ACT | egrep -v &quot;^[A-Z]+$&quot; | grep -i [A-Z] | wc -l; echo; done
</code></pre>
Here were the results that gave me, formatted into a table and sorted by descending frequency:<p><pre><code>    | Rank | Play                        | The or Th’ | Words | Per 10000 |
    |------+-----------------------------+------------+-------+-----------|
    |    1 | macbeth                     |        724 | 16929 |     427.7 |
    |    2 | henry-v                     |       1065 | 25577 |     416.4 |
    |    3 | coriolanus                  |       1126 | 27294 |     412.5 |
    |    4 | loves-labors-lost           |        855 | 21093 |     405.3 |
    |    5 | henry-viii                  |        962 | 24074 |     399.6 |
    |    6 | the-merchant-of-venice      |        834 | 20985 |     397.4 |
    |    7 | henry-iv-part-2             |       1001 | 25762 |     388.6 |
    |    8 | henry-vi-part-2             |        990 | 25597 |     386.8 |
    |    9 | hamlet                      |       1142 | 30006 |     380.6 |
    |   10 | henry-iv-part-1             |        856 | 24100 |     355.2 |
    |   11 | henry-vi-part-3             |        866 | 24491 |     353.6 |
    |   12 | antony-and-cleopatra        |        861 | 24465 |     351.9 |
    |   13 | king-lear                   |        898 | 25661 |     349.9 |
    |   14 | the-winters-tale            |        854 | 24568 |     347.6 |
    |   15 | king-john                   |        717 | 20730 |     345.9 |
    |   16 | cymbeline                   |        959 | 27738 |     345.7 |
    |   17 | a-midsummer-nights-dream    |        564 | 16377 |     344.4 |
    |   18 | richard-iii                 |        985 | 28914 |     340.7 |
    |   19 | richard-ii                  |        753 | 22224 |     338.8 |
    |   20 | henry-vi-part-1             |        715 | 21575 |     331.4 |
    |   21 | pericles                    |        605 | 18282 |     330.9 |
    |   22 | troilus-and-cressida        |        837 | 25810 |     324.3 |
    |   23 | titus-andronicus            |        659 | 20621 |     319.6 |
    |   24 | alls-well-that-ends-well    |        724 | 22683 |     319.2 |
    |   25 | measure-for-measure         |        693 | 21858 |     317.0 |
    |   26 | the-tempest                 |        518 | 16489 |     314.1 |
    |   27 | the-comedy-of-errors        |        455 | 14552 |     312.7 |
    |   28 | the-two-noble-kinsmen       |        735 | 23751 |     309.5 |
    |   29 | julius-caesar               |        592 | 19251 |     307.5 |
    |   30 | as-you-like-it              |        664 | 21692 |     306.1 |
    |   31 | twelfth-night               |        573 | 19675 |     291.2 |
    |   32 | othello                     |        737 | 25670 |     287.1 |
    |   33 | much-ado-about-nothing      |        591 | 20843 |     283.5 |
    |   34 | romeo-and-juliet            |        677 | 23948 |     282.7 |
    |   35 | the-merry-wives-of-windsor  |        604 | 21603 |     279.6 |
    |   36 | timon-of-athens             |        504 | 18262 |     276.0 |
    |   37 | the-taming-of-the-shrew     |        449 | 18709 |     240.0 |
    |   38 | the-two-gentlemen-of-verona |        404 | 17010 |     237.5 |
</code></pre>
Ignoring the whole log-likelihood stuff and just looking at the simple frequencies, I&#x27;m not completely sure that I buy the article&#x27;s argument.  Macbeth does come out on top by my analysis.  But some of the other plays seem to use &quot;the&quot; or &quot;th&#x27;&quot; nearly as frequently without being particularly creepy.  In terms of ratios of the frequencies, Henry V, a history, is only 2.6% lower than Macbeth.  And the first comedy, Love&#x27;s Labors Lost, is just 5.2% lower.