These days we often hear accusations of the English language having been dumbed down , so it is interesting to compare English now to that used by Shakespeare. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling are now more standardized than in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but can English today hold a candle to the Bard of Avon's work? Enter some English text in the box below and click the button. Your words will be compared with all the words used by Shakespeare in his plays and our verdict will be delivered on its Shakespearean content. Why not paste song lyrics or dialogue from your favourite television show into the box to see how much overlap there is with Shakespeare's English? Shakespeare feature loading, please wait... Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? - Technical notes: To produce this page we took the freely available text from our 1916 edition of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and processed it with a script that extracted all the unique words used in the plays. Your input is compared word-by-word with this list and a percentage correlation between the two is generated. No advanced techniques were used in processing the plays, so the Bard's