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To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

— King John, Act IV Scene 2

Shakespeare text statistics

Quick facts

The plays contain 34,896 total lines spoken by 1,221 characters.
There are 884,429 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.

Genres

Histories 290,923 (32.9%)
Comedies 283,011 (32.0%)
Tragedies 262,071 (29.6%)
Poems 30,909 (3.5%)
Sonnets 17,515 (2.0%)

Words

Top 15 word forms,
by frequency of occurence

the		28,944
and		27,317
i		21,120
to		20,136
of		17,181
a		14,945
you		13,989
my		12,950
in		11,513
that		11,487
is		9,545
not		8,856
with		8,293
me		8,043
it		8,003

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Characters

Top 15 characters,
by number of lines

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

See all the characters

Plays

Longest plays,
by number of lines

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

Shortest plays,
by number of lines

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

List all plays by number of lines

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