How many plays did Shakespeare make?

Answer 1

It is not clear that productions in Shakespeare's day had a "producer" in the modern sense of the term at all. The sharers all had a hand in the business end of the company, although Richard Burbage's brother Cuthbert was sort of the company manager which would make him closest to a producer. You mustn't be fooled into thinking that just because Shakespeare wrote the plays he was responsible for directing and producing them.

If what your question means is "How many plays did Shakespeare write?" the answer is that we have 38 which we believe to be at least partly by him and we know about two more that are lost. So forty, anyway.

Answer 2

We only know for sure the names of two plays in which Shakespeare played as an actor: Sejanus and Every Man in His Humour, both by Ben Jonson. However, we can be pretty confident that he played in many many more, including most if not all of the ones he wrote himself.

Answer 3

We know for a fact that he played in two of Jonson's plays, and the First Folio says he was also in a number of his own plays, but it is not clear how many of them he did act in. And in addition, he must have appeared in a number of plays by other people for which we have no documentation. As a result we cannot know how many plays he acted in.

Answer 4

Shakespeare wrote or co-wrote over thirty plays. Thirty-Six appeared in the First Folio, but others have been attributed to him in whole or in part since its publication in 1623. Even if all of the questionable attributions are added, the number would be in the low forties.

Answer 5

Shakespeare's company produced a number of plays, not exclusively those written by Shakespeare, in the modern sense of "production". Shakespeare was not really a "producer"--the nearest the company had to that was Richard Burbage's brother Cuthbert.

If you mean how many plays did Shakespeare write, the current academic consensus is 38.