To specify about your Shakespeare example, the hard copies are most definitely not under copyright as a whole. At least in the US, only the new, copyrightable material in them can be copyrighted. If it is not novel enough to be copyrightable on its own (like page numbers, titles, etc), it can't be copyrighted.

Frankly there are a lot of things that people and companies claim copyright on, and other people pay them for, that are not legally under copyright at all. But it is survival of the richest out there...