William Basse
Basse's most famous poem is his "enormously popular sixteen-line elegy on Shakespeare":
William Shakespeare
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" "Measure for Measure", "Troilus and Cressida", and "All's Well That Ends Well" and a number of his best known tragedies. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, "Hamlet", has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In "Othello", the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In "King Lear", the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play-offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". In "Macbeth", the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus", contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T.S. Eliot.