I don't know where else to post this as google searches didn't really help. so shakespeare wrote like an impressive amount of work in only 30 years. 39 plays, 150 sonnets and many other works, dude was cranking them out like crazy, and most are masterpieces, revered throughout the world. So my question is: was he just THAT fucking insane that he could pump out plays with minimal effort one right after the other like it was easy for him? Was he naturally that gifted? Or did he labor over his work and put extreme effort into being so good at it, where it consumed him? on average how much time and effort did he put into a play was it comparable to other playwrights? is he an example of hard work, commitment and dedication pays off ,or an example of ya gotta be born with a gift?
Sorry for coming up with some judgements, but 150 sonnets and 39 comedies is not a particularly high tally, it is rather average.
A contemporary of Shakespeare was the notorious Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, who churned out over 600 comedies, more than 3,000 sonnets, several novels, an epic poem, and had enough time left to sire 14 children (that he acknowldged) with 6 different women. The actual number of comedies written by Lope de Vega is still up to debate, as there are more than 1,000 circulating under his name. However, the general consensus is that he wrote somewhere over 600 and under 650. By the year 1609, as he mentions in his Arte nuevo de hazer comedias en este tiempo, he had written 473. If we consider that Lope would slow down a bit from there and only write 1 comedy per month for the remainder of his life, the figure would be some 620. Lope, of course, was an exception to human nature: he could write an entire 3,300 verses comedy in a couple of weeks if money was tight.
There are many other writers in the Spanish Golden Age whose figures are enormous compared to Shakespeare: Luis Vélez de Guevara wrote over 200 theatrical pieces including short pieces like intermezzos, Andrés de Claramonte is more or less on the same numbers as Vélez, Pedro Calderón de la Barca wrote 110 comedies and about 100 other theatrical pieces including intermezzos...
Shakespeare's numbers are low, but that does not mean a thing on its own. Shakespeare's comedies are really good, and that takes effort, correcctions, re-writing, tweaking with words here and there, etc. When Lope put effort into his comedies (which is only about 20% of the time), he created very good pieces, but most of the time he produced rather formulaic things that took him no time or effort (he was always short of money, but when you have 4 secret families, it is understandable). Calderón, on the other hand would take a couple months or three months to write a comedy, but each and everyone range between being amazing and being masterpieces.
It is always a matter of time and effort.