How many actual copies of the plays did Shakespeare write himself?

Answer 1

There was probably only one or two master copies of the play written by Shakespeare himself. There were no copyright laws in that time, and if full copies of the plays were given out, they were liable to be stolen by jealous playwrites from other theaters. Therefore, the actors were given only their parts, and cue words so they could know when their next part was coming up.

So Shakespeare probably only had full copies for himself.

Answer 2

No. One play, The Two Noble Kinsmen, is specifically credited to Shakespeare working in collaboration with John Fletcher. This was normal and typical of playwrights at the time, who sometimes got together in groups of three or four to write plays. Scholars believe that several more of Shakespeare's plays were collaborations, especially the later plays Pericles (with George Wilkins) and Henry VIII (with John Fletcher). Some also have stated that Shakespeare wrote with George Peele in such plays as Titus Andronicus.

Answer 3

This is a trickier question than you might think, because Shakespeare, like most of his contemporaries, collaborated with other playwrights from time to time. This collaboration might involve one or two playwrights looking over the plot and agreeing that one or the other should write certain scenes. It is clear that at the end of his career, Shakespeare collaborated with John Fletcher in such plays as Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. It is likely that early in his career he collaborated with George Peele. Many commentators think Peele wrote part of Titus Andronicus, and possibly that Shakespeare may have collaborated on Peele's Edward I and the anonymous Edward III. Shakespeare was one of a number of playwrights who contributed to the never-completed play Sir Thomas More.

It gets more complicated when you consider that we know the titles of some Shakespeare plays but don't have copies of them, and some people have claimed that certain anonymous plays were really written by Shakespeare, including Edward III, the Second Maiden's Tragedy, Arden of Feversham etc.

So, let's start with the 36 plays in the First Folio. One (Henry VIII) is a collaboration with Fletcher; another (Titus) is possibly a collaboration with Peele, and a third (Macbeth) has been revised by Middleton. The rest are by Shakespeare alone in all probability.

Then there is Pericles, a collaboration with George Wilkins, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, another Fletcher collaboration. Shakespeare and Fletcher also wrote a play called Cardenio, but it is lost. There is reference to a play called Love's Labour's Won, probably a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost which has also disappeared. So, all told, Shakespeare wrote in whole or in part, forty plays that we can be reasonably sure of. He may have written more.