Your post had me running to Heywood's,
'Fair Maid of the West' - as I think context here is so important. Shakespeare arrived at a very precise time and place. And he was surely, sure-footedly, political. And an entertainer, and a great writer. But sometimes I think that we don't read enough of Johnson, and Heywood, and the writers around Shakespeare but instead leap on an easy acceptance of what the past and present deify as mastery.
Have you read
'The Pooh Perplex'? It's a great lampoon of scholarly perspectives at the mid (20. When I re-read it now, I wonder again whether it is the original author or the scholarly perspective which is more important, and how that all fits within the needs of contemporary scholars to make a living.
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