The language studies ask three connected questions: which plays resemble Neville’s prose in their recurring two-word sequences; which contain the words and patterns that distinguish his writing from other correspondence; and when vocabulary associated with his embassy becomes more prominent in Shakespeare.
Chapter 12 compares bigrams by three methods. Chapter 13 tests 180 features selected from correspondence. Chapter 14 follows a panel of diplomatic vocabulary through the plays in time. Each chapter explains what was counted, presents the results graphically, and identifies the scope of the comparison.
The comparisons reveal suggestive and meaningful affinities with Shakespeare’s language. They extend the inquiry beyond individual passages to patterns across larger bodies of text. They are not definitive authorship tests: shared subjects, professional language and literary conventions can also produce similarity. The studies use overlapping material and answer different questions; their results should be read together without treating them as independent confirmations of authorship.