Shakespeare's Monologues — MCP server

A small, read-only Model Context Protocol server that lets MCP-capable AI clients search and fetch Shakespeare monologue metadata from shakespeare-monologues.org.

It's a thin, stateless wrapper over the site's public JSON index (/api/monologues.json) — no database, no secrets. Every result carries the monologue's permalink url (where the full text, scene context, and modern-English paraphrase live) and an attribution note.

Tools

Tool	What it does
search_monologues	Free-text search (character / play / first line) + filters: gender, play, style, act, limit.
get_monologue	One monologue's index entry by numeric id.
random_monologue	A random monologue, optional gender / play filters.
list_plays	Every play with its classification and monologue count.
list_all_monologues_for_a_character	Every monologue spoken by a named character.
get_monologue_of_the_day	The current Monologue of the Day (latest social post).
get_paraphrased_monologue	A monologue's full text + its modern-English paraphrase (AI-generated; may be null if not yet generated).
get_scene_summary	AI-generated summary of the scene a monologue is in (by monologue id).
get_play_summary	AI-generated summary of a play (by title).

The paraphrase and summaries are AI-generated (Claude) and only partially cached so far, so those tools return null where content hasn't been generated yet.

Run locally

npm install
npm run build
npm start          # listens on :3000, POST /mcp   (set PORT to change)

Health check: GET /health → {"ok":true}.

Connecting a client

Remote MCP means users add a URL, no install. In a client that supports remote / custom MCP servers (Claude Desktop connectors, etc.), add:

https://mcp.shakespeare-monologues.org/mcp

For clients configured with a JSON config file, use the streamable-HTTP transport:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shakespeare-monologues": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://mcp.shakespeare-monologues.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For a client that only speaks stdio, bridge to the remote server with mcp-remote:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shakespeare-monologues": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.shakespeare-monologues.org/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Note on "autonomous" use: there's no mechanism today for an arbitrary agent to discover and use this with zero user action — a client/platform still has to connect it. For truly zero-setup access, agents can hit the plain JSON API (/api/monologues.json) and /llms.txt directly.

License

• Code: MIT.
• Data served through it: © shakespeare-monologues.org, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — please keep the attribution that each tool response includes.