The word "playwright" itself may give us some insight into the making of Shakespeare. It means simply "one who makes plays", as a "shipwright" is one who does the same with ships. Well and good, but the interesting part is the attitude that the term implies toward the work. Essentially, its use means that it should be looked at primarily as a craft, as opposed to an art. Shakespeare's livelihood and those of the members of his company were reliant on him making plays, and like some classical music composers who had to write a specific amount for various situations (Haydn is an example), the fact that he was expected to produce a certain amount of work (at least two plays a year for most of his career) meant that he could afford relatively little distraction or introspection. He quite simply had to get on with business.

And of course large-scale works like complex dramas or symphonies require a lot of straight how-to knowledge. It's rare even now to find a composer, for example, who has written only one symphony. The hard part is to learn the steps of the process, but once they have been, then the artist can focus on the doing of the thing, rather than wondering what to do next. Shakespeare, clearly, spent his time on the first of these.