Please listen to me patiently.
In his biography The Testament of the World: How Shakespeare Becomes Shakespeare, greenblatt put forward two viewpoints that I disagree with: one is that Shakespeare has been escaping from his sensational Catholic past all his life, and the other is that his father left Shakespeare's family destitute. In order to support this obviously strange conclusion, greenblatt looked for a true description of drinking in Shakespeare's works and made it up when he couldn't find it.
How can we possibly know how much wine Shakespeare drank? Should we, like the dissolute Prince Hal, rummage through his literary pockets and find out the accounts of the pub? I think greenblatt made a mistake in his exploration and affirmation of the answers he found. The only way to answer these questions is through hard evidence (or at least gelatinous evidence).
I suspect that what prompted you to ask this question was a passage in the diary of john ward, the pastor of Stratford parish. Tel: 1662-8 1:
Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a good time together, but they all seemed to be too drunk because Shakespeare died of a fever there. ...
Some people may notice that most of Ward's comments on Shakespeare end with "as far as I know".
If this is our only evidence (anecdote after death), of course, maybe Shakespeare is addicted to it, whether he is used to it or not. But this is not the case.
John Aubrey told us about Shakespeare in his own collection of anecdotes.
He is not the boss of the company and will not lead a dissolute life. If he is invited, he will feel very painful.
Aubrey's source is William beeston, and his father Christopher beeston is an apprentice under the king, mainly engaged in 17' s plays in the 1930s. William himself is unlikely to know Shakespeare, because he was a child when he retired and died, but his father must have known him.
Are these sources contradictory? Not necessarily. Ward is a parishioner. He knew Shakespeare when he lived in Stratford. He got a good understanding of Shakespeare's gossip in his later years, and he stayed in Stratford all his career. Beeston spent his childhood and adolescence in the company of his father's colleagues, and he certainly got a better understanding of Shakespeare in London.
I believe Shakespeare got drunk and died of a fever? No. I don't believe that he spent most of his prestigious and prolific career cooking spices. The existing evidence seems to be in my favor.
Christina Nehrig acknowledged this in greenblatt's book review.
"What we don't like is that people who create crazy, humorous and hoarse Falstaff are not the core figures of the party. But then again, maybe we know very little, because there is really nothing to know. Perhaps Shakespeare just went home earlier than others, taking less risks, bragging less, fighting less, pursuing less women and suffering less from the same disaster. "
Bardolatry or the desire for a clearer description of the greatest English writer of all time can easily arouse our anger in all aspects of any particular debate. But I think Nelling is right-Shakespeare is neither formal nor dissolute; He's bored.