New: Use Wolfram|Alpha to Analyze Shakespeare and Other Great Works of Literature
Here’s yet another example for your growing list of things you can do with Wolfram|Alpha, the superb and always expanding reference and ready reference tool.
From a Wolfram|Alpha Blog Post:
For hundreds of years, scholars have carefully studied the plays of Shakespeare, breaking down the language and carefully dissecting every act and scene. We thought it would be interesting to see what sorts of computational insights Wolfram|Alpha could provide, so we uploaded the complete catalog of Shakespeare’s plays into our database. This allows our users to examine Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, and the rest of the Bard’s plays in an entirely new way.
Entering a play into Wolfram|Alpha, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, brings up basic information, such as number of acts, scenes, and characters. It also provides more in-depth info like longest word, most frequent words, number of words and sentences, and more. It’s also easy to find more specific information about a particular act or scene with queries like “What is the longest word in King Lear?”, “What is the average sentence length of Macbeth?”, and “How many unique words are there in Twelfth Night?“
The post also mentions that you can also use Wolfram|Alpha for computional analysis of other great works of literature including Moby Dick, Great Expectations, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Read the Complete Post for More Examples
A Couple of Screenshots
Search: Longest Word in Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet
Search: Moby Dick
Filed under: Patrons and Users, Resources

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.