William Basse

William Basse (c.1583–1653?) was an English poet. A follower of Edmund Spenser, he is now remembered principally for an elegy on Shakespeare. He is also noted for his "Angler's song", which was written for Izaak Walton, who included it in The Compleat Angler.

Family-background William Basse's family background and place of birth are unknown. He was described by the antiquary Anthony à Wood in 1638 as "of Moreton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, sometime a retainer to the Lord Wenman of Thame Park". R. Warwick Bond has suggested that Basse may have come to Thame from Northamptonshire as page to Agnes Fermor, first wife of Richard Wenman, 1st Viscount Wenman, and daughter of Sir George Fermor of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire. From the references made in Basse's poems to Francis Norris, 1st Earl of Berkshire, it has been inferred that the poet was at one time also attached to his household at Rycote, Oxfordshire. Basse dedicated Polyhymnia to Bridget, Countess of Lindsey, second wife of Montagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey, and the opening poem in the volume is addressed to the Countess's grandfather, Francis Norris, 1st Earl of Berkshire: Jane Lady Tasburgh, who had been the wife of Thomas Wenman (died 1577) and was mother of Richard, and then wife of James Cressy, had by 1602 long been married (as his second wife) to Thomas Tasburgh (died 1602-03), MP, of Hawridge, Buckinghamshire, a Teller of the Queen's Exchequer, the youngest representative of a family seated at Flixton in north Suffolk. Thomas and Jane Tasburgh, who acquired the Wenman manor of Twyford, had no Tasburgh children, and in 1597 granted Hawridge to their nephew Sir John Tasburgh, who built Flixton Hall in 1615. Sir John's wife was Lettice Cressy, half-sister to Jane's Wenman children.

A William Basse 'of Suffolk' entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1629, and took the degree of B.A. in 1632, and that of M.A. in 1636, but it is highly improbable that this student was the poet. There was a family named Basse, of Benhall, Suffolk, in the seventeenth century, of whom a William died in 1607, aged 85, and left a son Thomas and a grandson William, probably the Cambridge student; but it is impossible to identify the poet with any member of this family. The fact that his 'Great Brittaines Sunnesset' was published at Oxford, and his intimate relations with two great Oxfordshire houses, seem to connect the poet with Oxfordshire rather than with Suffolk. then second wife of Sir Thomas Tasburgh but formerly wife of Thomas Wenman (died 1577), and mother of Richard Wenman. In 1613 an elegy on Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, called "Great Brittaines; Sunnes-set, bewailed with a Shower of Teares, by William Basse", was issued by Joseph Barnes at Oxford. It was dedicated by the author "to his honourable master, Sir Richard Wenman, knight", and was reproduced at Oxford by W. H. Allnutt from the perfect copy at the Bodleian in 1872.

Basse's most famous poem is his "enormously popular sixteen-line elegy on Shakespeare": list twenty-seven different seventeenth-century manuscript versions of the poem, ten of which attribute it to Basse, including one (British Library, Lansdowne MS 777, fol. 67v) in the handwriting of Basse's friend William Browne. It first reached print in the 1633 edition of John Donne's poems, but was dropped from the 1635 edition, and was next printed in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's poems, with a correct attribution to 'W. B.' and the title 'On the Death of William Shakespeare, who Died in Aprill, Anno. Dom. 1616' (sig. K8v). The same year it was also printed anonymously in Wits Recreation.

Works

Great Brittaines Sunnes-set, bewailed with a shower of tears (1613) Maister Basse his Careere, or The new Hunting of the Hare To a new Court tune (1620) The Pastorals and other Workes of W. B., Never before imprinted Oxford, 1653. Ed. (Oxford, 1870) by J. P. Collier The Poetical Works of William Basse (1893) edited by R. Warwick Bond