How many plays did Shakespeare play in?

Answer 1

He was a regular actor for over 25 years, and for the most part the company learned a new play every two weeks. (Less often, of course, when there was a plague or a lull in business). Still, this suggests that he may have appeared in 500 or more different plays over the years.

Answer 2

Shakespeare began his career in the London theatre as an actor. We can be reasonably certain of this because a critic of his first play, Robert Greene, wrote a highly unfavorable review in which he stated that it was presumptuous of a "mere actor" to write a play. Shakespeare's name appears in the cast lists of the Chamberlain's Men acting company. There are some statements made that he also appeared in some of his own works but there are not positive records to substantiate this

Answer 3

Lots of plays. Although it does not specifically refer to The Lord Chamberlain's Men, Henslowe's Diary gives a pretty good indication of the schedule actors in Shakespeare's day faced. Over the course of a month, a playing company might give 26 performances of 14 or 15 different plays, 3 or 4 of which were new that month. They did this eight months of the year. Every year each company might learn twenty-five or so new plays. And Shakespeare was a working actor for around 23 years. That suggests that he may have played in well over five hundred different plays.

Henslowe's diary records that in March 1591 Lord Strange's Men were playing at the Rose and performed the following plays: Pope Joan, Macchiavelli, Henry VI (this is probably Shakespeare's play), Bendo and Ricardo, Four Plays in One, The Looking Glass, Senobia, The Jew of Malta (Marlowe), The Comedy of Don Orazio, Jeronymo (maybe The Spanish Tragedy?), Mullo and Mulocco, Constantine, Jerusalem, Harry of Cornwall, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (Greene). We don't know what company Shakespeare was with at this time; this could have been him.