Searching Shakespeare
Posted by sandnsurf on December 2008
Shakespeare Searched is a fantastic resource for reviewing Shakespeare’s texts. It is a search engine designed to provide quick access to passages from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Search results are clustered search by topic, work, and character to make it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The search engine [powered by Vivísimo Velocity] is easy to use and great for finding Shakespeare related information as simple as ‘identifying the speaker of a particular quote’ to ‘discovering the underlying thematic elements across works’.
This website is not a replacement for a copy of the text and provides no analysis or footnotes. Instead it is meant to supplement a traditional reading of a work.
Search
To get started, enter a search term(s) or phrase into the search box and click “Search Shakespeare” or hit Enter. To locate an exact phrase, use quotation marks.
Limiting your search
To search the text of a particular play, or the speech of a particular character, use the drop-down menus below the search box to make your selection and click “Search Shakespeare.”
To see all of a particular character’s speech, an entire play, or all of Shakespeare’s work clustered, make your selection, leave the search box blank and click “Search Shakespeare.”
The default setting searches all plays and sonnets.
Viewing search results
When you have completed your search, you can use the clusters to view and navigate your search results by topic. By clicking on the tabs above the clusters, you can also see your search results arranged by work or character.
Beneath the title of each search result is a link for “Surrounding text” which will display the text immediately preceding and following the selected passage. There is also a “Citation” link which will display detailed information about the source and location of that particular passage.
