How Many Plays Did Shakespeare Write?

William Shakespeare, also known as the Bard, is responsible for some of the best plays and poetry ever written in the English language. His most well-known works include Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth and Hamlet. However, Shakespeare wrote plenty more than just those. Publishing in the 17th century wasn’t quite what it is today, and the truth is that we don’t know exactly how many plays Shakespeare wrote for sure.

Most scholars agree that Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays. However, either because they are lost, or because of the poor documentation of the time, and the fact that authors don’t sign their names in a corner of their work like painters do, no one knows exactly how many plays Shakespeare wrote. It’s possible that he authored or co-authored an additional five plays, but those are not included in traditional collections of Shakespearean plays.

In the 17th century, playwrights often utilized the stage as a platform for dispensing their personal opinions on the hot topics of the day. Because of this, plays had to be registered before they could be published, essentially so that they could be censored. Shakespeare never published any of his plays, so none of them were registered. Some of them were published by unauthorized publishers (because there were no copyright laws at the time protecting playwrights or their work), but other than that, they were only performed until about seven years after Shakespeare’s death (April 23, 1616).

In 1623, John Hemminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare’s fellow actors in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, collected 36 of Shakespeare’s plays and had them published in the First Folio. Pericles, Prince of Tyre is the only play attributed to Shakespeare that did not appear in the First Folio.

Which Plays Did Shakespeare Write?

William Shakespeare’s plays can roughly be divided into three categories: tragedies, comedies and histories. This is how they were categorized in the First Folio.

Tragedies

• Antony and Cleopatra
• Coriolanus
• Hamlet
• Julius Caesar
• King Lear
• Macbeth
• Othello
• Romeo and Juliet
• Timon of Athens
• Titus Andronicus

Comedies

• All’s Well That Ends Well
• As You Like it
• Cymbeline
• The Comedy of Errors
• Love’s Labour’s Lost
• Measure for Measure
• The Merchant of Venice
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest
• Trolius and Cressida
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• Twelfth Night
• The Winter’s Tale

Histories

• Henry IV, Part 1
• Henry IV, Part 2
• Henry V
• Henry VI, Part 1
• Henry VI, Part 2
• Henry VI, Part 3
• Henry VIII
• King John
• Richard II
• Richard III

Additionally, Shakespeare may have authored or co-authored the following plays that were either lost or simply not positively identified as his work:

• Cardenio
• Edward III
• Love’s Labour’s Won
• Sir Thomas More
• The Two Noble Kinsmen

So how many plays did Shakespeare write? We don’t really know for sure, but we think the number is somewhere around 37. He was a writer, though, so there is no way of knowing what else he had up his sleeve that just never saw the stage.