The Founders
Six Profiles
Everything the project knows about each Founder, on one page.
Each profile aggregates the data from across the project: composite ranking, eleven-method breakdown, metaphor radar, archaic-form survival, plays cited, and a list of the case studies that focus on that Founder. Cards are ordered by composite score, highest first.
Rank 1 · 1735–1826
John Adams
The most Shakespearean Founder by every measure of conscious citation. Sixty-one verbatim quotations, forty-seven by-name references, six Shakespeare-only character invocations under the strict standard — and twice the candidate-echo density of any other Founder.
Composite 0.87
108 catalogue (61+47) · 297 echoes (MED+) · 6 Shakespeare-only
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Rank 2 · 1706–1790
Benjamin Franklin
Older-English register overlap, not direct Shakespeare absorption. Almost no quotation, but the highest archaic-form density of any Founder; the late-Stuart prose he learned in 1722 sits closer to Shakespeare's than any other Founder's.
Composite 0.78
2 catalogue (0+2) · 81 echoes (MED+)
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Rank 3 · 1743–1826
Thomas Jefferson
The educated reader's Shakespeare. Twenty-six by-name references, zero direct quotations, and four Roman character invocations (Brutus, Caesar) that are ambiguous between Shakespeare and Plutarch and not scored under the strict standard.
Composite 0.65
26 catalogue (0+26) · 130 echoes (MED+)
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Rank 4 · 1732–1799
George Washington
Sparse explicit Shakespeare. He ranks fourth on the composite at 0.34. His one strict catalogue item is the Othello 'good name' passage, attributed to 'Shakespear' in an 1796 letter; the well-known 'band of brothers' phrasing sits in the reception/common-stock tier.
Composite 0.34
1 catalogue (0+1) · 82 echoes (MED+)
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Rank 5 · 1755–1804
Alexander Hamilton
Fifth on the composite at 0.25, one step above Madison after the false-positive audit. Zero strict catalogue references and zero Shakespeare-only character invocations. The 1779 'spice of Julius Caesar or Cromwell' line was the v1 Roman exception; the strict Shakespeare-only standard sets it aside as classical, not Shakespearean.
Composite 0.25
0 catalogue · 27 echoes (MED+)
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Rank 6 · 1751–1836
James Madison
Alone at the bottom of the composite at 0.11 after a source-level audit dropped his two MEDIUM-tier catalogue items as false positives — Talbot Mundy's adventure novel spliced into his Gutenberg supplement, and an 1780 'tempest' reference that described a real West Indies hurricane, not the play. Strict catalogue: zero.
Composite 0.11
0 catalogue · 28 echoes (MED+)
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