If it is possible to become an intellectual giant without any formal education, shouldn't we have more than one instance of it happening?

As far as I can ascertain, of the 100,000 or so of intellectual giants that have lived, all but one had lots and lots and lots of education to help them get where they got.   The one exception is our Bill. If you can cite a second one, that would be useful

Otherwise, I have to rely on the proverb "It is the exception that proves the rule".   That would fix it.

Oh, wait, wait.   That proverb is based on the original meaning of "prove", that is "to test".    Dragnaggit - back to the drawing board.

But, just for the sake of discussion, let us assume that a giant brain can gain all the knowledge it ever needs by reading.   And to make it simpler, when a person has never spelt is name in a particular way, nor pronounced it in that way, this has no relevance whatsoever to our debate.   

Now all we have to do is eliminate all the other elements to eliminate Edward.

Anyone want to discuss why our Bill, at the age of 40,, packed the whole lot in and went back to Stratford to spend the last year's of his life as a grain merchant?   His original memorial depicted a grain sack - it was what he was famed for.   (A 60 years later the grain sack was changed to look like paper and quill pen - that is what he had become famed for).   

Despite more than two centuries of research, there isn't a scrap of documentation that Shakspere, the Warwickshire merchant, ever wrote anything in his life. There are no manuscripts, poems, letters, diaries, or records in his own hand. His will, dictated to a lawyer, makes no mention of a literary legacy and who should inherit it.

Consider the chronology: a gifted and prolific writer (Edward) stops writing when he is appointed to be a courtier, and Bill springs out of left field and immediately begins writing like a champion.   The previously gifted and prolific writer dies, and shortly thereafter Bill is hit with a total and permanent writer's block.   

I think we really need to get rid of these two coincidences to be able to put Bill safely back on his pedestal.