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as the King James Bible. The English language is not standardized until this period. England is mostly illiterate in the 1500s. Spain is conquering the new world and Spanish is very easy to learn. It reads just like you would expect. England plays catch up. John Dee writes a textbook of euclidian geometry in the late 1500s because England needs a generation of sailors.

We can read (to some degree) the original printings of Shakespeare today because the standardization that was established then continues to the present.

The plays were not standouts in the 1587 - 1623 period (source: Henslowe). The First Folio was a very expensive book (still is). The plays are about monarchy and high net worth individuals. They tell us a lot about what those people's values were and what kind of entertainment they liked but history is better understood through primary sources -- letters, contracts, censuses, wills, etc.

Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare until 1769. That's a big gap. 'Mucedorous' was the top selling play of Shakespeare's era. The name Shakespeare was mostly known in print for 'Lucrece' and 'Venus and Adonis'. The amount of apocrypha is equal to the amount of works in the official cannon. The idea that people were flocking to plays with that name on them is revisionist and not supported by the evidence.