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Shakespeare was involved in many aspects of London’s professional theatrical world. He was an actor, a playwright, and a shareholder in an acting company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, which became the King’s Men when James I became king in 1603. His plays were performed on professional stages owned by his company--first the Theatre, and then, after 1599, the Globe. (After a property dispute, the Theatre was disassembled and the timbers used to build the Globe). In 1609, his company began using its own indoor theater at Blackfriars. His plays were performed in many other spaces, including the royal court, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the Inns of Court, public buildings and outdoor spaces in the provinces, and private households.

The total number of Shakespeare’s plays varies somewhat, depending on who is counting them, and how. The total shifts between 38 and 40 plays as scholars reassess references to his two lost plays--Love’s Labor’s Won and Cardenio--and analyze how large a hand he had in some collaboratively-written plays.

This category includes all publications of his plays, up to and including the First Folio in 1623; all entries for his plays in the Stationers' Register; administrative documents from the National Archives and elsewhere that make reference to his theaters and theater companies; and printed and handwritten references to seeing and/or reading his plays. Read Alan H. Nelson's thematic essay to learn more about lawsuits in Shakespeare's England.

Visit the British Library's Shakespeare in Quarto, to learn even more about actorsplayhouses and theater companies in Shakespeare's time, and to view completely digitized copies of Shakespeare's plays.

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ca. 1570
SHAKESPEARE DOCUMENTED IS STILL GROWING! Descriptive content and transcriptions will continue to be added, updated and expanded. Check back for regular updates!
ca. 1580-1608?
The scholar and writer Gabriel Harvey was known and mocked in his lifetime for making copious notes in the margins of printed books. An inventor of words, friend of Edmund Spenser, and rival of Thomas Nashe, he constantly sought to improve himself through note-taking and repetitive reading.
1592
The earliest known allusion to Shakespeare as a playwright appears in Greenes, groats-worth of witte.
ca. 1592
Fair Em is an anonymously written play that at various points since the mid-seventeenth century has been attributed to Shakespeare.
1592
SHAKESPEARE DOCUMENTED IS STILL GROWING! Descriptive content and transcriptions will continue to be added, updated and expanded. Check back for regular updates!
1592
SHAKESPEARE DOCUMENTED IS STILL GROWING! Descriptive content and transcriptions will continue to be added, updated and expanded. Check back for regular updates!
April 3, 1592
"The Tragedy of Arden of Faversham and Black Will" was entered by Edward White in Stationers' Liber B on April 3, 1592 and licensed for publication by John Aylmer, Bishop of London.
1592
Arden of Faversham was first published anonymously by Edward White in 1592, and has been associated with the Shakespeare canon since the late eighteenth century.
1594
In 1594, Peter Short printed an anonymous play called The Taming of a Shrew to be sold by Cuthbert Burby.
1592- 1594
The entrepreneur Philip Henslowe’s unique “Diary,” or account book, of his extensive theatrical enterprises records the titles of over 325 plays from 1592 to 1604, including two, perhaps three, plays written in part or whole by Shakespeare: Henry VI Part

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