Were the final copies of Shakespeare's plays written by hand?

I hope to hell we’re not going to debate again whether they could have been typed by monkeys…

The reference photo shows printed text. That is, mechanically printed, on a press.

My first question is what do you mean by “final copies”?

If you mean those copies used by the actors, the answer is that we have no way of knowing since none of those have survived.

@hawaii_jake, the actors, or the scripts?

:)

@CyanoticWasp : rofl. Yes.

It would be difficult for Shakespeare to “hand in” copies of his plays for First Folio publication; they were collected and published seven years after his death.

At the link cited by @PandoraBoxx:

“Printed in folio format and containing 36 plays (see list of Shakespeare’s plays), it was prepared by Shakespeare’s colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell and published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare’s death.”

By that time the printing press had been around for not quite 200 years.

@Jeruba, perhaps we should cross-link this to an ongoing fluther thread regarding mechanical printing with movable type… right here

There’s some overlap, @CyanoticWasp, but I think the point here is that manuscripts were not hand-copied by scribes in Shakespeare’s time. Books were printed on a press with movable type.

@Jeruba Your answers were exactly what I was trying to ask, thanks!