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Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them,ùbut not for love.

— As You Like It, Act IV Scene 1

Shakespeare text statistics

Quick facts

The plays contain 34,895 total speeches spoken by 1,221 characters.
There are 884,421 total words in Shakespeare's 43 works.
There are 28,829 unique word forms, and 12,493 occur only once.
Those unique words account for 43.3% of total word forms.
The top 10 most frequently occuring words make up 21.4% of all words.
The top 100 most frequently occuring words make up 53.9% of all words.
The top 1% most frequently occuring words make up 66.7% of all words.

Word count by genre

Tragedies 289,628 words (32.7% of total)
Comedies 283,011 words (32.0% of total)
Histories 263,358 words (29.8% of total)
Poems 30,909 words (3.5% of total)
Sonnets 17,515 words (2.0% of total)

Most-searched keywords

Searches	Keyword
9,694	love
6,798	I
6,076	blood
4,525	is
4,278	hate
3,862	be
3,647	night
3,639	you
3,384	my
3,376	death
3,014	sleep
2,902	time
2,678	man
2,609	me
2,456	honour

See the top 500 keywords

Most-searched works

Searches	Work
32,424	Hamlet
29,151	Macbeth
18,015	Romeo and Juliet
15,220	Othello
12,482	King Lear
8,987	Midsummer Night's Dream
7,039	Tempest
7,032	Julius Caesar
6,152	Merchant of Venice
6,104	Twelfth Night
5,799	Sonnets
5,231	Much Ado about Nothing
5,051	Henry IV, Part I
4,898	As You Like It
4,735	Measure for Measure

See the full list

Word frequency

Top 15 word forms,
by frequency of occurence

28,944	the
27,317	and
21,120	i
20,136	to
17,181	of
14,945	a
13,989	you
12,949	my
11,513	in
11,488	that
9,545	is
8,855	not
8,293	with
8,043	me
8,003	it

Find a word in the concordance

Biggest roles

Top 15 characters,
by number of speeches

471	Falstaff
377	Henry V
358	Hamlet
285	Duke of Gloucester
274	Othello
272	Iago
253	Antony
246	Richard III
210	Timon
204	Cleopatra
201	Rosalind
194	Vincentio
194	Brutus
189	Coriolanus
188	Lear

See all the characters

Play lengths

Most speeches

1,361	Antony and Cleopatra
1,309	Othello
1,301	Troilus and Cressida
1,250	Hamlet
1,240	Coriolanus

Fewest speeches

605	Midsummer Night's Dream
621	King John
636	Richard II
662	Titus Andronicus
664	Comedy of Errors

See all plays by number of speeches

Average speech length

Number of words per speech

35.26	Richard II
33.45	King John
31.33	Titus Andronicus
31.26	Henry VIII
30.62	Henry V
30.61	Winter's Tale
29.49	Merchant of Venice
28.16	Cymbeline
27.80	Henry IV, Part I
27.62	Henry VI, Part II
27.45	Henry VI, Part I
27.29	Midsummer Night's Dream
26.03	Henry IV, Part II
25.60	Henry VI, Part III
24.87	As You Like It

See average speech lengths for all plays

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