Tool

Description

random_quote

Return a random quote from the corpus, optionally filtered by author, fame, verification status, or tag. Each result includes citation: work, year, speaker (for plays/fiction), and source URL.

search_quotes

Search quotes by substring. Matches both canonical text and known popular paraphrases — searching for 'protest' finds Hamlet's 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks' even though the popular form 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much' is what most people remember.

check_attribution

Given a quote and (optionally) the author it is claimed to be by, return one of four verdicts: "verified" (genuine, with citation), "misattributed" (no primary source — popular but fake), "paraphrase_of_verified" (popular corruption of a real quote, returns the actual text), or "no_match" (not in corpus). Useful for journalists, researchers, and anyone tired of fake Mark Twain quotes.

quote_by_location

Look up quotes by structural address within a work — act/scene for plays, chapter for novels. Example: author_id="william-shakespeare", work_title="Hamlet", act=3, scene=1 returns the "To be, or not to be" line.

list_authors

Return all authors available in the corpus — each entry includes author id (used as input to other tools), display name, birth/death dates, and public-domain status.

list_full_text_works

List works for which the full text (every scene, speech, and line) is loaded — beyond just the famous-quote excerpts. Use this to discover what is available for deep structural lookup via get_scene and get_act.

get_scene

Return the full text of a specific scene from a play (every speech, every line, in order). Example: author_id="william-shakespeare", work_slug="hamlet", act=3, scene=1 returns the entire "To be, or not to be" scene including all of Hamlet's soliloquy and the subsequent dialogue with Ophelia. Useful for context, citation, or close reading.

get_act

Return the full text of an entire act (all scenes within it). Use this to read a full structural unit at once. Returned object contains nested scenes with their speeches and lines.

get_chapter

Return the full text of a chapter from a novel/prose work (all paragraphs in order). Example: author_id="oscar-wilde", work_slug="the-picture-of-dorian-gray", chapter=2 returns the entire chapter where Lord Henry tempts Dorian. Use list_full_text_works to discover which works are chapter-based.