Shakespeare Tools and Study Aids

More than four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare’s language and works remain some of the richest in English. Complex and rewarding to study, they can also be difficult to understand because English has drifted since his time. Some words that were common in Shakespeare’s day are now uncommon or even archaic, while others have changed meaning entirely.

Our Shakespeare tools are built to help readers understand and break down that vocabulary. Search every word and phrase across all thirty-eight plays, the sonnets, and the poems, and see where a word is used, which act and scene it appears in, and which characters say it. Paste in a passage, and the glossary defines the archaic words, the uncommon ones, and the ones whose meaning has changed, using Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare Lexicon. Or try the lighter side and prepare to be insulted, Shakespeare style. If you want to test how well you really know his works, try our famous-line quiz and match the quote to the play.