Curious Facts

There are 884,421 words in the complete works of Shakespeare. ¹
The 1769 edition of the 1611 King James Bible contains 788,280 words.
Assuming a reading speed of 150 words per minute, it would take 98 hours 16 minutes and 8 seconds to read the complete works of Shakespeare aloud.
The King James Bible would take less than 88 hours to read aloud at 150 words per minute.
There are 28,829 unique word forms in Shakespeare's works.
12,493 of the unique words in Shakespeare (43.3%) only appear once.
The top 10 most frequently used words in Shakespeare account for 21.4% of all the words.
The top 1% most frequently used words in Shakespeare account for 66.7% of all the words.
The playwright Ben Jonson, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, was spared execution after killing the actor Gabriel Spencer by reciting a “neck-verse”. This was a legal loophole which enabled the literate to escape execution by reciting a section of the bible in Latin. ²

1. Most of the facts pertaining to Shakespeare on this page are taken from: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/stats

2. 1599 – A year in the life of William Shakespeare, James Shapiro.