We have something similar in the US with our mythography around Abraham Lincoln.

And there is a paradox in many of these genius stories -- the person is presented as both a super unique individual but also a "man of the people".

Saw an exhibit on New Sweden (the failed colony near Philly) that pointed out it was the Finns who brought the log cabin to the Americas. The stereotype of Finns (Finnlanders) is best known now via Huckleberry Finn -- pragmatic, humble, hard working, honest too a fault. And log cabins carry that same image. The exhibit pointed out that 3 US Presidents claim to have been born in log cabins and 3 more claimed to have lived in one.

The 'humble origins' thing seems to be pushed to make genius and extraordinary abilities more relatable and less 'Dr Frankenstein'.

for him came from Tom Blankenship, a real life friend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry_Finn

The character of Huck Finn is based on Tom Blankenship, the real-life son of a sawmill laborer and sometime drunkard named Wood-son Blankenship, who lived in a "ramshackle" house near the Mississippi River behind the house where the author grew up in Hannibal, Missouri.

Twain mentions his childhood friend Tom Blankenship as the inspiration for creating Huckleberry Finn in his autobiography: "In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's." – Mark Twain's Autobiography.

>The surname Finn has several origins. In some cases it is derived from the Irish Ó Finn, meaning "descendant of Fionn"; the byname means "white" or "fair-haired". In other cases it is derived from the Old Norse Finnr, a personal name sometimes derived from a byname, or else from compound names beginning with this word element. In other cases Finn is a German surname derived from an ethnic name referring to people from Finland.< -Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finn_(surname)

My point was only that the character name Huckleberry Finn is the most popular use of the name in American literature and that it plays on 19th century stereotypes about Finlanders.

who was "the other town drunkard" with Tom Blankenship.

https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Lamb_Roots.pdf

From an academic article (you need a free sign-in to read it): https://www.jstor.org/stable/461003

"Finn, a common enough name then and now, is also joyously and unmistakably Celtic and, as such, had connotations of the Irish in nineteenth century America: typically servants and laborers in a status only slightly higher than that of the Negro ... The Irishness of Huck was not lost on E. W. Kemble, the illustrator of the first edition, who emphasized that aspect of the boy's appearance more than Twain thought necessary (footnote of Twain letter to his publisher: "the boy's mouth is a trifle more Irishy than necessary" )."

Or another analysis contrasting Finn's Irishness with the vast majority of surnames in the novel being Anglo-Saxon: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27746723

Also remember that log cabins would not be seen as "Finnish"; Scandinavian, perhaps, but Finland was a border region that Sweden and Russia had fought over, and the latter had won, by the start of the nineteenth century.

Twain himself said the name was to imply "of lower extraction" than Sawyer, if you want the stereotype to hunt:

Points taken. Had not heard of Jimmy Finn.

I see that the character was portrayed in early films by distinctly Irish types -- Jackie Moran, Mickey Rooney.

Thanks for the correction.

The word 'genius' is thrown around far too often. We certainly have contemporary examples of the appellation, too frequently applied to those who have amassed huge piles of wealth or those who self-promote the myth to puff up their own puny egos. And yes, the media plays along whenever they can.

Thanks for the OP.

Add to that enough literacy to be able to write, and a lot of "down time" to do so - is that a form of genius?
Wouldn't Shakespeare the equivalent of Mark Twain, George Barnard Shaw, or Hunter S. Thompson, without the distractions of technology? We know about him just because the Printing Press came along in time for his Folios for his more popular plays to be printed after he died -as many of them appeared to be still politically relevant at the time.
The fallacy of ancestral infantilism comes from later generations belief that it must have been a magical spark of genius (or Gods or Aliens) to make technological advances, when for the most part, archeology and historical research shows us the "genius" - curiosity or intuition - has always been around since hominids began to figure out tools; it just takes time for technology to be leveraged upon enough to get to where we are now.
People can be outward oriented, observant, curious or imaginative. They can be Artists, creating out of what appears to be a whisper of a feeling or a word.
Or they (pretty much the majority of people)can be self oriented or followers, feeling comfortable living or working with a regular, set routine. They can vary between Artisans and Drones, working or leveraging off an existing framework or rule-set.
Or a combination of all of above.

Genius occurs everywhere, but to define the point where quickness and cleverness becomes Genius often confuses the distinction between a clever person who can bring a product to market quickly with someone who takes time and effort working out a proof on an innovation before it can be brought to market.

Is the seller who markets and profits off the product the genius, or the engineer or artist who took the time to develop and perfects/proofs the product the genius? Or are they both geniuses?

Should there be a distinction between the two if they're separate?

Haele

While "craft" or "craftsperson" has a more mundane connotation. Craft is a more reliable career path than art. Craft is taught and practices and perfected. Art is innovative and spurious. Genius gets used in a similar way to "art" but to be useful to society it has to be closer to craft, eg. it has to pursue and communicate knowledge that builds on the body of knowledge that precedes it.

There are plenty of geniuses who are dysfunctional.

He didn’t have to read Shakespeare

Old joke.

She uses that bit at 3:21

Have to look her up.
Finishing out a 2 day work week with a skeleton crew (3 people are here) so I used Shakespeare for his best purpose, killing time.

Too many bits to remember

Harry Potter
Tender
I’m guessing the joke about separate families and Norfolk is like a Kentucky or West Virginia joke here
Richard Three
“…his stories usually made since, it was just the words that sounded like gibberish”

“Game of Thrones….only coherent”

Her Cunk character pushes them to the boundaries of their politeness.

Which in itself makes it funny in a shocking, unexpected way. But the poor people she interviews look as if they've been hit in the face with a 2x4. Those reactions don't look staged either. I'd love to know what they were thinking in the moment.

I have lost count of the number of arguments I've had over the movie Good Will Hunting for this very reason. Being, as we are told with multiple sledgehammers, a genius, Will Hunting simply can't be wrong about anything. Despite the movie's grab for the heartstrings all I could ever see was the patent unrealism of this not very smart person's fantasy of what it must be like to be smart. A character who not only does Nobel-level maths on the blackboards after class is let out, but who in a fit of pique invades the library and spends a weekend studying the history section (a topic he's never shown the slightest interest in) just so he can humiliate his romantic rival by showing extraordinary knowledge of the field his rival has spent years studying. And let us not forget how Will whines aggressively to Robin Williams that nobody can understand how easy this all is for him, as if he spends his time pining for a problem that's actually difficult enough for him to need to think about it to solve.

I brought this up once on a tech discussion site with a lot of pretty smart people who proceeded to pile on and insist I was jealous because I couldn't understand what it was like to be such an extraordinary person myself. To which I replied, jealous of what? That's like being jealous of Superman, a fictional character who doesn't and can't possibly exist in the real world. Smart people are mortal too, and knowing a lot isn't the same at all as knowing everything. It's actually worse, because it is true that "the more you know, the more you know you don't know." Smart people are much more likely to understand their own limitations than, shall we say, less-smart people. That's part of the Dunning-Krueger effect.

And good catch on the Will Hunting bit -- "whines aggressively to Robin Williams that nobody can understand how easy this all is for him" Ha!

Beginner Mind is the better path to knowledge. The first plateau of deeper learning is knowing enough to know how much you still don't know.

The flaming genius part was total baloney on many levels.

I love it but find that I have to be in a moody frame of mind when it comes on. This is the first track:

Guess the jury will be forever out in respect to his actual demise.

When a historian shows me convincing evidence that Ramanujan really preferred to get blasted with his beer buddies on the weekends, preferred being a janitor to showing off his maths skills, regularly mastered entire fields other than math that history has documented he had no interest in, and a couple dozen other totally stupidly unrealistic things about Will Hunting, then I'll admit that maybe you have a point.

in places he'd never visited.

For many of them he relied on older plays or--in the case of the history plays--biographies or other works of history, most notably Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. Romeo and Juliet, set in Italy, was a well known story that had already been published--as poetry--in French, Italian, and English. The English poem was a best seller in its day, written by Arthur Brooke, and several plays based on his poem were acted even before Shakespeare's.

Similarly, Shakespeare's work is full of nautical expressions and allusions. Although there's no evidence--none that I'm aware of anyway--that he ever went to sea, the pubs of London at the time were always filled with sailors, and Shakespeare might well have gotten his nautical knowledge from them.

Of course much of his work is totally original--at least we don't know of earlier versions. This is especially true of his characters. While the main plot of "Much Ado About Nothing" is based on a story by Matteo Bandello, the subplot about the love/hate relationship between Benedick and Beatrice is entirely Shakespeare's and is far and away the best part of the play. This happens quite often. Shakespeare takes a rather mediocre source--and Bandello's story is in fact pretty awful--and punches it up almost beyond recognition. Mark Antony's speech in Julius Caesar is another example of this. Shakespeare's source was evidently an English translation of Plutarch's Lives, but Plutarch only mentions that Antony used his speech to inflame the crowd. The speech that famously begins, "Friends Romans countrymen lend me your ears" was entirely Shakespeare's.

Just an aside: if you want a treat, find Marlon Brando's rendition of this speech. An absolutely amazing performance.

Yes, Shakespeare was a genius. But it isn't any magical knowledge of places and people he never saw or met, but rather his stunning use of language that sets him so far above other writers.

Thank you for your superb analysis of Shakespeare. I enjoyed reading it, even though I half-expected before the end an anti-Shakespearean accusation that he didn’t write the plays.

My knuckles are bruised and bleeding from having to duke it out with smug, semi-literate conspiracy nutcakes who insist that he didn’t write the plays, which were instead written by some highly-implausible, and sometimes imaginary, alternative candidate.

Shakespeare’s knowledge was not unassailable, and he made mistakes in matters of geography (he located Milan on the coast of Italy, for example) and other subjects. But we remember him and still perform his plays because they are works of literary genius.

I disagree with the OP that Shakespeare was used to further English cultural imperialism. Use of vernacular English began to grow during the reigns of Henry VII, and his son Henry VIII, long before Shakespeare was even born.

Would it not make more sense that the person who wrote Shrew, Verona, Much Ado, Merchant of Venice, Othello, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus and Romeo & Juliet HAD personally visited Italy?

That's 25% of the canon and far beyond the depth one gets via conversations with drunken sailors.

Got the Brando clip. Very natural delivery. All the more interesting because Brando favored improv and method. Thanks for the tip!

but I don't think such a visit is absolutely necessary to account for his knowledge of Italy, which, as another poster points out on this thread, was in fact not all that well informed. I think pretty much all the plays you mention were based on earlier versions to which he would have had access.

My point about sailors had to do with his many nautical turns of phrase and metaphors. I can easily imagine him hanging out with crowds of drunken sailors, soaking up their language. Then again he might well have gone to sea--we simply don't know.

Brando is amazing in this. His "let slip the dogs of war" speech, which comes before this scene, is also stunning.

thanks for that.

Years ago, my boss at a film studio took Ray Walston out to lunch and right as Walston was telling how he had been classically trained and done Shakespeare but will always be remembered for his TV role, a woman at the next table caught their eyes and with both hands mimed extending antenna above her head ala "My Favorite Martian".

I am an English Lit major but came back to Shakespeare while researching Henry Hudson (~1565 to `1611). Historians disagree strongly with Literature scholars. I easily found connections between Hudson and John Dee and Leonard Digges and Walter Raleigh and Richard Haklyut and many others that made up the circle of explorers, writers, publishers in this period. Hudson has 4 writers on his final voyage, two of whom planned to publish. Sailors, especially the officers, were more literate than the general population and they valued books, especially those that held up to repeated readings. At this time London had no more than 23 master printers operating less than 60 presses so it is fairly easy account for everyone. The primary source records disagree with the traditional biographies of Shakespeare and many parts of that biography are being abandoned.

Right now is a wonderful time to be researching history because of the tools and digital resources that have become available. As with the genetics of Columbus, which were well known for a decade but publicized widely only last October, science has forced some radical rewrites.

Someone has reassembled parts of John Dee's famous library and put the books and their marginalia online. This gives us an unprecedented perspective into what authors of the era had available to them:
https://archaeologyofreading.org/bibliography/Dee-corpus/

I'll post more maybe later, but in the meantime I loved the story about Ray Walston.

As well as Shakespeare he did a lot of Broadway. I think his breakthrough was playing the devil in "Damn Yankees":

My sister was a History major and I didn't see the appeal but decades later I find that it deepens one's understanding of the present and of the dynamics of civilization and culture. History "doesn't repeat but it rhymes" as the saying goes.

It is also like solving a crime or a mystery since there is so much bias and silo'ing in written histories. Having new tools like DNA, LiDAR and online searchable records has pushed history further in the direction of science and forensics.

One of my jobs was in casting and we scoured Broadway for young adult actors who could be interested in doing a sitcom. Plenty, perhaps the majority, of Broadway actors would not consider doing a sitcom pilot. The risk was high since most pilots fail but also because as with Walston, "success" has a price also, eg that you wind up doing 'Married With Children' for 15 years and never have the Broadway career you wanted.

Happy 2025 to you also!

when Shakepeare was born, and books (and literacy) weren't as rare as before. He spent his adult years in one of the more global cities in Europe - and the wealthiest in England, with many booksellers, some of whom specialized in travel stories and thrilling tales of adventure (one of his contemporary Stratfordians, who also moved to London, was a printer who had apprenticed to a French bookseller - and later married his daughter). Shakespeare's business partner and fellow actor Will Kemp spent some time in Italy and elsewhere on the continent. From court records we know that Shakespeare boarded with a French family for at least some part of his stay in London. He also spent time in the courts of Elizabeth and James I performing his and others' plays (back then, theater companies had to have a royal patron to avoid being arrested as vagabonds. One of the companies he played with was Lord Strange's Men - Lord Strange, later Earl of Derby, was a cousin of Elizabeth I).

I've seen quite a few of Shakespeare's plays, and his geography of the settings is usually superficial and pretty general. Where he goes into more detail is in the lives of ordinary people - the laundry customs of the middle class in "Merry Wives of Windsor", the country folk buying trinkets and ballads from a traveling peddler in "The Winter's Tale", the rude mechanicals in "A Midsummer's Night's Dream". He also mocks the stiff and overblown court pageants in "Love's Labour's Lost" (and has the principal characters disguise themselves as Muscovites, since trade with Russia was a new thing then)

Two books I recommend are Peter Ackroyd's "Shakespeare" (which goes into details such as how the first act of "Romeo and Juliet" is set in daytime and the last at night, since outdoor plays started in mid-afternoon and continued til dark), and Shapiro's "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare", which is about how local and global events influenced his plays in the late 1590s. Shapiro's "Contested Will" is a good summary of various "Will didn't write this" claims - the current fad is to attribute them to the Earl of Oxford, but before that "Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare" was all the rage.

I'm getting off track: Shakespeare wrote plays for the money, and took plots and ideas from wherever and whoever he could. Like modern writers I know, he probably had a stash of possible plot points and ideas and strung them together to make a quickie entertainment for the masses - I think this was how "The Winter's Tale" was written ('Will - we need a new play ASAP!' 'Well, I have this bit about intrigue in a vaguely defined foreign court, and another bit about a rural sheep-shearing festival..' 'Great! See if you can knock them together somehow. And we need to get more use out of that costume the company bought - can you write a scene with a bear?')

Shapiro and other traditionalists write the biography as literature. For example, Shapiro wrote an entire book just on the year 1606 -- "The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606". This is something a historian would not do because there are absolutely no records of what Shakespeare was doing in 1606. There are over 60 documents -- birth records, death records, fines, the grain hoarding, the Mountjoy deposition, etc. -- but none of those shine any light on 1606. Filling in blanks where evidence is absent is the fodder of conspiracy theory and it is unscholarly.

Shapiro, like most literary experts, is strong on the works (literary criticism) but he does not stick to facts when writing about the life of the author. He is working outward from the works to what he assumes about how and when they were written. I came back to the Shakespeare biography while researching Henry Hudson (~1565 to ~ 1611). More water in the northern hemisphere is named for Hudson than for any other person yet we have almost no documentation of his life outside of the 1607, 1608, 1609 and 1610 voyages. When historians write about Hudson they make very clear what is documented versus what is contextual. They footnote and quote source materials, mostly Juet's log. Shapiro, on the other hand, boldly asserts what "must have" happened yet his assertions stray far from the 60+ primary source documents. Shapiro has a lot of fun filling in blanks but I have to stick to the historical record.

Hudson and Shakespeare are contemporaries. Both work in London at a time when the population was around 100,000. Both have ties to the printing business which is VERY small and very tightly controlled. There are less than 23 master printers operating less than 60 presses so it is fairly easy for historians to track those involved. I was initially excited by the idea that I could tie Hudson and Shakespeare via the gestation of 'The Tempest' or via patrons. I found a lot of material on Dr John Dee (1527 to ~1609), whom some had proposed was an inspiration for the character of Prospero. Dee is part of the inner circle of Queen Elizabeth and Dee publishes, among many things, the first English textbook on euclidean geometry, a skill which is key to navigation. Dee was an advocate of looking for the northwest passage or a path straight over the pole.

I was easily able to track Dee, Hudson, Dudley Digges, Haklyut (a printer of maps and travel literature), John Smith and Walter Raleigh through their dealings in London but I could not, using primary source materials, track Shakespeare beyond the Mountjoy deposition and the Gatehouse purchase. Neither of which ties to patrons, publishing or exploration.

Went the other way, eg FROM Shakespeare to any of the others. Looked at Philip Henslowe's (1550- 1616) diary which gives us primary source documentation for performances of Henry VI, Titus Andronicus and a play titled "The Taming of A Shrew" (not "the Shrew&quot . Henslowe tells us who wrote plays, how much they were paid, how well the plays did with audiences. He pays Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Henry Chettle, George Chapman, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, Anthony Munday, Henry Porter, John Day, John Marston and Michael Drayton. Who's missing?

It has been frustrating and I understand now why historians side step the Shakespeare biographies -- sorting fact from assertions in them is very time consuming and fruitless. Shapiro seems attracted to 1606 because it give him free reign. He treats the lack of facts a "feature, not a bug".

I wonder how much was lost over the years, starting with the burning of the Globe. I kinda agree with you on "The Year of Lear": I think Shapiro's book on 1599 was better written. I still believe, though, that the plays were written by someone who had some personal knowledge of rural working and middle class people and a spectator's knowledge of the nobility. Unless, as some wag wrote decades ago, the plays are attributed to the otherwise scantly documented Will Shakespeare "because 'The Oxford Edition of Oxford' would look too egotistical"

and likely survived, ironically, only because paper was so scarce thus the same folio was reused.

In transcribed and searchable format:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924026121305/page/n95/mode/2up?view=theater

The Shakespeare works were steadily improved over most of a lifetime and perhaps polished yet again in 1623. I agree that having more posh origins is SEEN (perhaps feared) as making the works less attractive to wider audiences but I think their strength and appeal comes from what is on the page -- the economy of the language, the polish, the power to evoke. Eg. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little lives are rounded with a sleep." They show someone who was obsessed with languages, not just English.

It is easy to rule out the Stratford origins based on the available documents which show a person who is nothing like the author. The person in those legal documents is petty and vindictive, leaving his wife only "the second best bed". More damning to the case are the abbreviated "signatures" made on their behalf and in secretary hand. I find it impossible to fathom that the greatest writer in the English language could not sign his own name but it such illiteracy is perfectly consistent with the life of a market town business man whose parents and children were illiterate at a time when most people were.

Some have theorized that the Shakespeare manuscripts were destroyed in the Ben Jonson desk fire. The timing of which fits with the folio publication. Recently Robert Prechter published his work which alleges that the hand behind Shakespeare wrote under a dozen other pennames and he lays out a timeline of when names were introduced and retired. It is fascinating even if not completely satisfying in its proof. He says he published because he wanted feedback and he will revise as facts demand.

Lost in the popular understanding of Shakespeare is that the most popular works published with that name were also the first ones to use it -- the long, erotic poetry of 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece'. These are explained away as something that Shakespeare was reduced to doing during the plague when theaters were closed but they read nothing like a first effort by a market town grain dealer. Far easier to see them as the works of someone in midlife; someone with a strong background in classical literature. IIRC the first printing was anonymous, the second used a hyphen to signal that "Shake-speare" (verb + noun) was a pseudonym. OTOH Shakspere (pronounced like Shack Spur) was a very common surname. Shakespeare is a pseudonym even if Shakspere was the one using it.

Proving who didn't write it is far easier than proving who did. Bacon was never a good candidate and that is why the traditionalist like that to cite that one. Marlowe fits the timing and the style but deVere checks all the boxes. Whole other discussion. Read a great book last year by a journalist who stumbled into the same fire storm that Samuel Clemens, Freud, John Paul Stevens, Mark Rylance and hundreds of others found. Her book looks at the whole phenomenon of the "forbidden" Stratford debate and builds on that by looking at the often dysfunctional dynamics of academia.

I was an Earl of Oxford guy for awhile....I think it was from a PBS Frontline documentary I watched. It was interesting to say the least

I have since tempered my foolish ways and realized revisionist history is pretty much a cop-out

Because his works at the time were considered lowbrow art for the masses, like how people of today would see really popular but cheesy slapstick sitcoms or movies

Every opportunity the Bard of Avon performed for royalty was a "PhD" for him. Queen Elizabeth's palaces were adorned with worldwide gifts (stuffed ostriches, Oriental oddities, etc) and was a museum of learning for a man whose farthest travels were probably the borders of Wales or Scotland. The Immortal Bard took extensive notes on those visits.

As a DU-er pointed, the saloons and pubs were immersed with sailors. Shakespeare synthesized their worldwide tales with recently translated works from writers such as Plutarch, as well as the exotic items he witnessed at the palaces.

One of the reasons for organizing Shakespeare's works into a folio was to save the exact language. Unscrupulous publishers would attend the plays at the Globe and scribble down the lines, making mistakes along the way.

The greatest writer at the time of William Shakespeare's ascendancy was a university-educated playwright named Christopher Marlowe. But the Immortal Bard, who did not attend college, would soon eclipse Marlowe. Gentle Will would maintain a rivalry with warrior-playwright Ben Jonson after Marlowe's untimely and mysterious demise.

Like Shakespeare, Ludwig van Beethoven and President Abraham Lincoln also did not attend college. Genius is genius.

It was the most popular play of the era with 16 printings between 1598 and 1668.

By the arc and evolution of Shakespeare's plays, ending with the Tempest (which was solely written by the Bard of Avon without collaboration), I would argue not.



If Mucedorus takes place in one entire day in the classical Greek play tradition, then Shakespeare did not write it. By then, Shakespeare wrote his plays to take place over time. In Hamlet and the Tempest we see or hear about the past and we look forward to a future.

Shakespeare finally reverts back to the one-day form in The Tempest. Also in his swansong, no one dies as the play is not dependent on violence like his earlier works.

Shakespeare wrote about real problems facing Londoners, but disguised them in historical plays so as not to offend the Privy Council or Queen Elizabeth. In Henry V and Julius Caesar, Shakespeare made fun of the monarchy's handling of the once-Catholic holidays.

If there are real problems in Mucedorus that he pokes fun at in camouflage, then the Bard of Avon may have written it. I'll read it and see.

If Shakespeare scholars contend that Gentle Will wrote Mucedorus, so be it. He may have collaborated on it as those London playwrights were friends and rivals. Ben Jonson ridicules Falstaff in "Every Man in His Humour" with his Captain Bobodil character and Shakespeare takes it with aplomb as they were friends. In fact, Shakespeare reportedly played the role of Bobadil on stage a few times for Ben Jonson.

I read Mucedorus today. This was fast moving and probably as short as Macbeth, but I didn't do a word count. The play reminded me of As You Like It for obvious reasons. There were some memorable lines in the play and parallels to future works. Bremo is a Kaliban predecessor and Mouse is like Touchstone.

After reading this once, and only once, I must say Mucedorus was not written by Shakespeare. I am by no means an Elizabethan scholar, but there were enough subtleties which dissuaded me from his authorship.

I do not recall seeing Shakespeare's heroines or villainesses in combat or even being invited to join in combat in other plays, yet Bremo asks Amandine to fight for her freedom. (e.g. we do not see Lady MacBeth commit murder, but we see her bloody hands). Also in these early plays (circa 1590), the London crowd was amused by the faux-combat and special effects the actors produced. Blood would squirt from limbs and the actors were well-versed in the martial arts (dagger, knife, sword, etc). When Mucedorus finishes Bremo with one comedic blow, this would have been to anti-climactic for 1590 which the Bard of Avon would have understood. Only over time did Gentle Will wean the London crowd from the violent bloody scenes of Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, and Richard III to the non-violent The Tempest.

Shakespeare used the "Greek chorus" to open and close his plays from what I remember. in Mucedorus, Envy and Comedy (as Gods or Muses) break the "fourth wall" with that role. And whom would the actors be addressing in the audience? Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I, were she in attendance. Gentle Will avoided problems with the monarchy and the Privy Council (unlike Ben Jonson who was jailed) and would have been indirect in addressing the monarchy to avoid lese-majeste. When I read the end of Mucedorus, Envy and Comedy seem to be addressing someone specific.

COMEDY:
"Glorious and wise Arch-Cæsar on this earth,
At whose appearance, Envy’s stricken dumb..."

ENVY:
Amen!
"To Fame and Honor we commend your rest,
Live still more happy, every hour more blest."

I noticed on the Wiki page some scholars suspect George Peele, Robert Greene, or Thomas Lodge as the real author of the comedy. I am not familiar enough with them to proffer a clue. Wiki did not mention Ben Johnson, which is probably correct.

But one suspect Wiki does not mention is a playwright-Parliamentarian named John Lyly (1553–1606) who was considered the "father of English comedy" and possibly bold enough to "address" royalty.

Lyly is certainly a good candidate.

In Henslowe we see many hands are employed in single works, somewhat like the way Netflix uses "Show Runners" and writing rooms to grind out long form series. But I align with your thinking that the Shakespeare works show a more singular authorship, a higher polish and unity of style and action.

In this version below, Mucedorus uses a sword. The theater director (like an orchestra conductor) has artistic license.

BTW: Who do you suspect is the Third Murderer?

And his real education was decades in the theatre, and decades of life in the tumult of the Reformation/Elizabethan era.

He had an extraordinary gift for making meaning and beauty with the English language. He also understood humans and recognized the reality of the inner life and internal conflict affecting the actions and motivations.

None of those requires a classical education or continental travel.

And he benefitted from his friends and rivals. London theatre in the Elizabethan era was like rock and roll in the 60s-- each learned from the others, and the brilliance progressed in leaps and bounds.