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When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.

— Sonnet XXX

Shakespeare text statistics

Quick facts

The plays contain 34,895 total speeches spoken by 1,223 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
139,813	1
132,360	love
90,877	hate
71,205	blood
56,365	I
39,264	be
38,976	is
35,258	night
33,343	death
32,855	-1'
32,428	you
30,836	sleep
30,444	my
27,161	time
24,189	loved

See the top 500 keywords

Most-searched works

Searches	Work
450,405	Macbeth
412,329	Hamlet
346,246	Romeo and Juliet
258,180	Othello
223,480	King Lear
162,834	Antony and Cleopatra
162,316	Twelfth Night
159,436	Henry V
158,761	Midsummer Night's Dream
152,985	Henry IV, Part I
147,972	Cymbeline
146,013	As You Like It
145,461	Coriolanus
141,416	All's Well That Ends Well
138,618	Henry IV, Part II

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
409	Richard III (Duke of Gloucester)
377	Henry V
358	Hamlet
274	Othello
272	Iago
253	Antony
210	Timon
204	Cleopatra
201	Rosalind
194	Brutus
194	Vincentio
189	Coriolanus
188	Lear
183	Henry VI

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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