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I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,ù
A stage, where every man must play a part;
And mine a sad one.

— The Merchant of Venice, Act I 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
9,934	love
6,996	I
6,164	blood
4,670	is
4,331	hate
3,955	be
3,779	you
3,721	night
3,494	my
3,441	death
3,084	sleep
2,984	time
2,723	man
2,698	me
2,496	honour

See the top 500 keywords

Most-searched works

Searches	Work
32,924	Hamlet
29,788	Macbeth
18,538	Romeo and Juliet
15,533	Othello
12,769	King Lear
9,188	Midsummer Night's Dream
7,238	Tempest
7,217	Julius Caesar
6,434	Merchant of Venice
6,274	Twelfth Night
5,999	Sonnets
5,368	Much Ado about Nothing
5,220	Henry IV, Part I
5,093	As You Like It
4,951	Antony and Cleopatra

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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