How many manuscripts of shakespeare have survived?

Answer 1

None.

Answer 2

37 or 38 if you count The Two Noble Kinsmen, which he co-wrote with Fletcher. It's probably fair to count it, since he probably wrote other plays with Fletcher which we count as Shakespeare's, notably Henry VIII and Pericles.

Answer 3

All of Shakespeare's plays were performed. We only have his plays because they were recorded by people who listened to them or performed them. We have none of his original manuscripts because they got copied out for the actors to use and then the copies were kept. We would like to have his manuscripts with his notes, since the printed versions of the plays raise a lot of questions. And if wishes were horses . . .

Answer 4

Scholars now believe that we have the scripts to 38 plays which Shakespeare wrote or co-wrote. In addition every year or two some scholar will claim an anonymous Elizabethan play as Shakespeare's (such as Edward III or The Second Maiden's Tragedy.) Some of Shakespeare's plays are certainly lost, however.

There are two play titles to which we have references in the documentary evidence but no script has survived. One was called Love's Labour's Won (presumably a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost) and the other Cardenio (one of his last plays, written with John Fletcher).

Answer 5

There were thirty-six plays published in the first Folio. Pericles, which had already been published under Shakespeare's name, was added in the Third Folio. Nowadays just about everyone believes that Shakespeare co-wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher, like it says on the cover. That makes 38 plays usually attributed to Shakespeare as a sole author or collaborator. Then there are two others that seem to have disappeared: Love's Labour's Won and Cardenio, although some people think that Cardenio was rewritten and retitled as Double Falsehood, a Restoration play. There are also a number of plays called apocryphal--we have the texts of these plays, and some people like to claim that they are by Shakespeare, although most do not accept this claim. Some apocryphal plays are Arden of Faversham, Locrine, The Puritan, The London Prodigal, Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, A Yorkshire Tragedy, The Second Maiden's Tragedy and Edward III.

Answer 6

All of them. Some companies who devote themselves to Shakespeare's work make sure that they put on every single one of his plays in the course of a dozen seasons. That means that occasionally people will even put on Pericles, Cymbeline and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Answer 7

None. None of Shakespeare's plays survive in manuscript form, only in printed copies.

Answer 8

We have 38 plays which we believe to be Shakespeare's and which still exist.