“I should really read all of Shakespeare” is one of those intentions that sits on the list indefinitely. Thirty-nine plays. One hundred and fifty-four sonnets. Several narrative poems. The scale is real, but it is also almost entirely unmeasured in most people’s minds. Is this a project for a year, or five years, or a whole lifetime? Without a concrete number, the question stays permanently open.
The answer is specific. Shakespeare’s complete canon runs to approximately 884,647 words across all plays, sonnets, and narrative poems. At an average reading speed of 200 words per minute, reading everything takes around 73 hours and 43 minutes. At a careful study pace of 100 words per minute, the same canon takes approximately 147 hours and 26 minutes. These are real, calculable figures, and having them in front of you turns a vague ambition into a plan with an actual timeline.
The 39 plays average around 21,400 words each, but the range matters considerably for planning. Hamlet, the longest play, runs to approximately 30,066 words, which takes around two and a half hours to read at a standard pace. The Comedy of Errors, the shortest, runs to approximately 14,701 words and can be read in around 74 minutes. The sonnets, all 154, total approximately 17,677 words and take around 88 minutes to read in a single sitting. The narrative poems add a further 28,000 words across Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the remaining verse works.
Most people approach Shakespeare across a range of formats: reading, performance, audio, and study. Each produces a different reading pace and a different time commitment. This calculator handles all of them. It uses verified word counts for every play, the complete sonnets, and all major narrative poems. It lets you set your own reading speed and study pace, compares reading to audio, breaks the canon down work by work, and converts any daily or weekly time commitment into a realistic completion timeline.
The calculator is a time-based tool only, with no commentary on how to approach the plays, no suggestions about reading order, and no interpretation of the works. It simply answers the question of how long the reading actually takes.
How the Calculator Works
Every time figure in the calculator is driven by real word counts for each of the 39 plays, the 154 sonnets, and the narrative poems that make up Shakespeare’s complete canon. The total across all works is approximately 884,647 words.
Set your reading speed using the slider or the preset buttons. Most adults read continuous prose and verse at somewhere between 150 and 250 words per minute. Shakespeare’s verse and prose mix affects reading pace in practice: blank verse tends to slow most readers slightly compared to continuous prose, while familiar plays read faster on a second pass. Two hundred words per minute is a reliable general average to start with, and adjusting the slider from there gives a personalised figure.
A separate study speed setting models a slower, more reflective engagement. Study reading of Shakespeare typically involves re-reading speeches, consulting notes, and working through unfamiliar vocabulary. A pace of 80 to 100 words per minute is realistic for this kind of engaged reading, and the calculator keeps study time and reading time separate so the difference is visible rather than blended.
The audio toggle adds a third comparison figure based on narrated or performed playback at your chosen speed. Standard theatrical audio recordings run at approximately 130 words per minute on average.
The work-by-work table updates as you adjust your speed settings, showing individual reading and study times for all 39 plays, the complete sonnets, and the narrative poems. The daily and weekly plan inputs return a realistic completion estimate at your chosen pace and available time.
Use the Shakespeare Reading Time Calculator
Set your reading speed, study pace, and available daily or weekly time below. The play-by-play breakdown and completion estimates update automatically.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare contain approximately 910,177 words across 38 plays, 154 sonnets and 4 narrative poems. Adjust your reading speed, study pace and audio narration speed below, and the calculator works out exactly how long each play: and the full works, takes at your personal pace.
🎭 What do you want to read?
Choose the complete works, a specific play, the sonnets, or a narrative poem.
📖 Reading speed
Most adults read prose at 150–250 words per minute; Shakespeare's verse often reads a little slower. Use the presets or fine-tune with the slider.
Used to calculate your personalised daily completion plan.
✏️ Study speed
Study reading is slower: typically 50–120 wpm, allowing time for footnotes, close reading and annotation.
🎧 Audio narration speed
Standard audiobook and RSC recording narration runs at around 110–150 wpm. Adjust to match your preferred pace.
📅 Reading plan
Plan by daily or weekly minutes. A common goal is reading the entire Complete Works in a year.
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At your reading speed—
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At your narration speed—
Reading time ÷ your daily minutes—
at your reading speed—
🎭 Time per play
| # | Play | Genre | Acts | Words | Reading | Study | Audio |
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💫 The Sonnets
All 154 sonnets, 2,156 lines, 19,316 words in total.
19,316
All 154 sonnets—
At your reading speed—
At your study pace—
At your narration speed🌹 Narrative poems
| # | Poem | Lines | Words | Reading | Study | Audio |
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Reading vs Studying Shakespeare
Reading and studying Shakespeare are different activities that produce very different time commitments, and conflating the two is one of the most consistent reasons ambitious reading plans collapse.
A straight reading of the complete canon, moving through each text at a steady pace without stopping, takes approximately 73 hours and 43 minutes at 200 words per minute. Spread across a daily habit, that is a manageable if substantial commitment: 30 minutes a day completes the full canon in around 147 days, and an hour a day brings it down to roughly 74 days.
Study reading is a different proposition. Working through the plays at 100 words per minute, a pace that allows for pausing, re-reading speeches, considering context, and navigating notes, brings the total to approximately 147 hours for the complete canon. For anyone using a heavily annotated edition or reading alongside commentary, the total rises further still.
The plays vary in how much this difference matters in practice. Comedies with rapid, colloquial dialogue tend to read at closer to standard pace. Late plays such as The Winter’s Tale or Cymbeline, which mix several registers and styles, tend to slow most readers significantly below their usual speed. Histories with large casts and political complexity reward a more deliberate pace. Deciding which mode applies before starting a given play, and setting the calculator accordingly, gives a far more reliable session plan than assuming a middle ground.
Time Per Play and Poem
The 39 plays of the canon vary a lot in length, and that variation produces meaningfully different time commitments across the reading project.
The average play is approximately 21,400 words, which takes around 107 minutes to read at 200 words per minute. At a study pace of 100 words per minute, the same average play takes around 214 minutes, just under three and a half hours.
Hamlet is the longest play at approximately 30,066 words. At 200 words per minute, a straight reading takes around 2 hours and 30 minutes. It is roughly twice the length of the shortest play in the canon and far denser in terms of vocabulary and structural complexity, which means the gap between reading time and study time is larger here than for most other plays.
Richard III is the second longest at approximately 29,278 words, followed by Coriolanus at around 26,768 words and Cymbeline at approximately 26,157 words. The histories and later tragedies tend to cluster toward the longer end of the range.
The Comedy of Errors is the shortest play at approximately 14,701 words, readable in around 74 minutes at a standard pace. A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs to approximately 17,419 words and takes around 87 minutes. Macbeth, often assumed to be longer given its reputation, comes in at approximately 19,554 words and takes around 98 minutes to read.
The 154 sonnets total approximately 17,677 words, which at 200 words per minute takes around 88 minutes to read in full, making the complete sequence roughly comparable to a single shorter play in terms of reading time.
The narrative poems add a further 28,000 words across all works. Venus and Adonis is the longest at approximately 9,991 words, taking around 50 minutes to read. The Rape of Lucrece runs to approximately 8,100 words at around 40 minutes. The remaining verse works, including The Phoenix and the Turtle, A Lover’s Complaint, and The Passionate Pilgrim, together account for the balance.
Daily and Weekly Reading Plans
The most practical use of this calculator is entering a realistic daily or weekly time commitment and seeing what completion timeline it produces.
At 10 minutes a day, the complete canon takes approximately 442 days at 200 words per minute, just under 15 months. At 15 minutes a day, that comes down to around 295 days, roughly 9 to 10 months. At 30 minutes a day, the full canon is complete in approximately 147 days, just under five months.
For weekly planning, 60 minutes per week produces a completion time of approximately 74 weeks, or around 17 months. At 120 minutes per week, two one-hour sessions, the same reading takes around 37 weeks, or just over eight months.
These timelines are for straight reading. At a study pace of 100 words per minute, the equivalent figures roughly double: 30 minutes a day of study reading would complete the full canon in approximately 294 days, just under 10 months.
The plan that actually produces a completion is the one built on a realistic daily figure. Ten minutes is the most common failure point: it feels too modest to be worth doing, but at that rate the complete works are finished in just over a year. Fifteen minutes a day, maintained consistently, finishes the full Shakespeare canon in under ten months, with no particularly demanding single session required.
One useful approach is to plan by play rather than by time target, with the calculator showing how long each play will take at your chosen pace. Working through the 39 plays in roughly chronological order or by genre allows natural breaks between sections of the canon rather than tracking a percentage of a single large number.
Reading vs Listening
Shakespeare’s works are performed texts, and audio recordings and theatrical productions are widely used alongside or instead of reading. The natural question for anyone choosing between formats is which takes less time in practice.
Standard audio recordings of the plays run at approximately 130 words per minute on average, though this varies by production: some recordings run faster, unabridged audiobooks slower. At 130 words per minute, the complete canon takes approximately 113 hours and 25 minutes in audio, compared to around 74 hours for a reader at 200 words per minute. For most adults, reading silently is meaningfully faster.
For someone reading at 130 words per minute or slower, the difference narrows and becomes a matter of preference rather than efficiency.
The practical case for audio is flexibility and, for the plays in particular, fidelity to the form. Shakespeare’s plays were written to be performed and heard, and audio recordings preserve the verse rhythm, the character voices, and the dramatic structure in ways that silent reading does not.
Many readers use a hybrid approach: reading the text of a play first at their normal pace, then listening to a recording of the same work. The calculator’s audio toggle lets you compare both formats directly and work out the combined time of a dual approach if that is how you plan to engage with the canon.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to read Shakespeare’s complete works?
At an average reading speed of 200 words per minute, reading the complete works of Shakespeare takes approximately 73 hours and 43 minutes across all 39 plays, the 154 sonnets, and the narrative poems. At a careful study pace of 100 words per minute, the same canon takes approximately 147 hours and 26 minutes. The exact figure depends on your personal reading speed and which works you are covering.
How many words are in Shakespeare’s complete works?
Shakespeare’s complete canon contains approximately 884,647 words across all plays, sonnets, and narrative poems. The 39 plays account for the majority of this total, with the sonnets adding approximately 17,677 words and the narrative poems approximately 28,000 words.
How long does each play take to read?
The average Shakespeare play is approximately 21,400 words, taking around 107 minutes to read at 200 words per minute. Hamlet, the longest play, runs to approximately 30,066 words and takes around 2 hours and 30 minutes. The Comedy of Errors, the shortest, runs to approximately 14,701 words and takes around 74 minutes. The play-by-play table in the calculator above shows individual reading and study times for all 39 plays at your chosen speed.
How long does it take to read all 154 sonnets?
The complete sequence of 154 sonnets totals approximately 17,677 words. At 200 words per minute, reading all 154 in a single sitting takes around 88 minutes. Individual sonnets average around 114 words each, which at 200 words per minute takes approximately 34 seconds per sonnet at a straight reading pace.
Is audio narration faster than reading Shakespeare?
For most readers, no. Standard audio recordings run at approximately 130 words per minute, which is slower than typical adult silent reading speed of 150 to 250 words per minute. The complete works in audio at 130 words per minute takes around 113 hours, compared to approximately 74 hours for a reader at 200 words per minute. For those reading at 130 words per minute or slower, the difference narrows considerably. For the plays specifically, audio recordings have a practical advantage in preserving the dramatic form even if they take longer in total.
Can this calculator help with a study programme?
Yes. The study speed slider models a slower, more reflective pace of engagement, closer to 60 to 100 words per minute, which is more representative of genuine study than straight reading. Adjusting this alongside a daily time input shows how long a study-based programme would realistically take, play by play and in total. The difference between reading pace and study pace is particularly significant for longer, more complex plays such as Hamlet, King Lear, or the histories.
Who built this calculator?
The Savzz Complete Works of Shakespeare Reading Time Calculator was built by the team at Savzz.co.uk, a UK discount code and money-saving site. We also build free practical tools designed to give honest answers to time and cost questions. This calculator uses real word counts for all 39 plays, the complete sonnets, and all major narrative poems. It is free to use with no sign-up needed.
Final Thoughts
Reading the complete works of Shakespeare is a project that most people assume is far longer than it turns out to be, or alternatively one they assume they could knock out quickly and consistently underestimate because they have not looked at the total. Approximately 884,647 words and 74 hours of reading at a standard pace is a genuine project, but it is also one that 15 minutes a day resolves in under 10 months.
Once the number is specific rather than vague, the planning question becomes straightforward: how many minutes a day is realistic for you, and which plays do you want to prioritise. The calculator above converts any honest answer to the first question into a completion date, so the project moves from indefinite intention to a dated target.
Set a daily figure that reflects your real schedule rather than an optimistic one, and the canon becomes manageable in a way it rarely feels when the whole thing is just a number in the abstract.
