Ideas vs. Reality

Ralph Waldo Emerson discusses how Shakespeare's characters are more than just a fictional person who go through fictional problems and meet fictional people from a variety of time periods: they are alive.  But how can one man (in this case, William Shakespeare) create hundreds upon hundreds of characters who have real life issues and real life personalities make these people so relatable and believable?

In my opinion, Shakespeare created his characters based off of those whom he knew and watched.  In my mind, I see Shakespeare as a man who sits with a pen and paper and writes down the characteristics of those whom he meets or finds interesting on the street.  The characters that we meet through his plays are too relatable and have problems that society faces everyday -- and to fit all of those different archetypes (i.e. King Lear, Kent, Edmund and Edgar) into one show with characters that he completely invented off of the top of his head, I consider almost to the point of impossible.

For instance, King Lear -- a man with many fears and troubles, desires and needs, whose life takes a turn for the worst; is obviously one who can be related to.  His desires are not met when his youngest and most lov'd daughter remains silent when asked to describe her love for her father -- therefore, banishment is in order.  His needs are not met when his two eldest daughters betray him and order him to leave and never return to them again.  His fears and troubles come true when all that he knew and once was his is falling down in front of him -- starting with Regan and Gonreil's death.
A character so detailed and dynamic as King Lear would take years and years to process and to make perfect.  I don't believe that Shakespeare had that kind of time, considering the numerous amounts of plays he wrote during his life.

I believe that his characters were based off of people that he interacted with on a daily basis -- but their personalities and problems were exaggerated to a dramatic level; sometimes in the form of comedy, tragedy, or a mixture of both.