i believe he wrote his own stuff but did not come up with the plots. .

Shakespeare wrote more than 30 plays covering a variety of subjects and genres--tragedies, comedies, and histories. His plays are remembered mainly for three things--the beauty of the words he wrote, the excellence of his storytelling, and his inventiveness with words. He used a vocabulary of more than 20,000 different words (the King James Bible, in contrast, uses less than 10,000 different words), many of which he invented himself and which are still in use today. His plays dealt with such important themes as how a country should be run, how power should be transferred, and how to respond to an unjust government, but he also showed great insight into matters such as relationships within families and between men and women.
There have been many arguments about whether Shakespeare really wrote the plays that are attributed to him. It has been argued that he did not have enough education or the background to use language the way he did or to have the insight into human nature, history, and the various issues that he treats in his plays. It has been proposed that another person or persons actually wrote the plays, using Shakespeare as a "front." This person might have been a member of the nobility who did not want to be openly associated with the theater. However, these theories did not surface until long after Shakespeare's death. The written record indicates that Shakespeare's friends and contemporaries certainly accepted him as the author of the plays attributed to him, and it was not until many decades after his death that his authorship was questioned. It seems unlikely that such a secret could have been kept by so many people, and in the absence of convincing evidence that he did not write the plays, or that someone else did, it is generally accepted now that Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him.

Few of Shakespeare's plays were based on plots of his own invention. He drew on the history of England (Henry VIII, Henry V, King John), old stories (Hamlet), classical history (Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra), Italian stories (Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen from Verona), and contemporary prose (As You Like It, A Winter's Tale). However, he always improved on his source materials, for example, by expanding minor characters, introducing entirely new characters, rearranging plots to make them more effective, giving the a wider philosophical outlook, and writing wonderful dialogue to put in the mouths of the characters.

Shakespeare's influence continues until this day. His plays are still staged all over the world, and they continue to influence playwrights, directors, theater designers, and actors.

Shakespeare by S Kathleen and Kenji Kitao