What would it be like? We know a lot about William Shakespeare.
We have the text of most all of his plays, we have baptismal
records, a will, and other legal documents, and we also have
attacks, criticism and praise of his works by his contemporary
playwrights. We can infer from these much of what he thought
about the world. But because what he wrote is spoken by
characters in his plays and poems, we have very scant evidence
about his own personality. Much scholarly ink is used to
interpret his works, especially his sonnets, to find out what
sort of person he really was. In addition to the scholarship
applied to this task there is also the imaginative works of
other authors, who have used him as a character in their own
books.