William Basse Biography

William Basse (c.1580-1653/4) was an English poet. He was a follower of Edmund Spenser. He is now remembered mostly for a eulogy he wrote about Shakespeare.

In 1602 two poems by William Bas were published in London. The one was entitled 'Sword and Buckler, or Serving Man's Defence;' the other 'Three Pastoral Elegies of Anander, Anetor, and Muridella.' The former was reprinted in J. P. Collier's Illustrations of Early English Popular Literature, vol. ii., in 1864. 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 in 1872.

No other volume of Basse's poems was printed in his lifetime, but two manuscript collections, prepared for the press, are still extant. Of these one bears the title of 'Polyhymnia,' and has never been printed. The only copy of it now known belonged to Richard Heber, and afterwards to Thomas Corser; on the fly-leaf is the autograph of Francis, Lord Norreys, to whom the opening verses are addressed, and to whose sister, Bridget, countess of Lindsey, the collection is dedicated. Another manuscript of 'Polyhymnia,' described by William Cole in his manuscript 'Athenae Cantab.' and now lost, differed materially from the Corser manuscript. The second collection left by Basse in manuscript came to F. W. Cosens; it consists of three long pastoral poems, of which the first is dedicated to Sir Richard Wenman; bears the date 1653, and was printed for the first time in J. P. Collier's 'Miscellaneous Tracts,' in 1872. To it is prefixed a poem addressed to Basse, by Ralph Bathurst, who compares the author to an 'aged oak'. Bathurst's verses were printed in Thomas Warton's Life of Bathurst (1761), p. 288, with the inscription 'To Mr. W. Basse upon the intended publication of his poems, January 13, 1651.'

Basse is best known by his occasional verse, particularly by his Epitaph on Shakespeare. The poem is in the form of a sonnet, and was first attributed to John Donne, among whose poems it was printed in 1633. In the edition of Shakespeare's poems issued in 1640 it is subscribed 'W. B.,' and Ben Jonson refers to it in his poem on Shakespeare prefixed to the folio of 1623. In a manuscript of the reign of James I in the British Museum (MS. Lansd. 777, fo. 676), the lines are signed 'Wm. Basse.'

Basse also wrote a commendatory poem for Michael Baret's Hipponomie, or the Vineyard of Horsemanship (1618), and he has been identified with the 'W. B.' who contributed verses to Philip Massinger's Bondman (1624), although William Browne has also been claimed as their author. In Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler the piscator remarks, 'I'll promise you I'll sing a song that was lately made at my request by Mr. William Basse, one that hath made the choice songs of the "Hunter in his Career" and of "Tom of Bedlam," and many others of note; and this that I will sing is in praise of Angling.' Basse's 'Angler's Song,' beginning 'As inward love breeds outward talk,' then follows. Of the other two songs mentioned by Walton, a unique copy of 'Maister Basse, his careere, or the new hunting. To a new Court tune,' is in the Pepys collection at Cambridge; it is reprinted in Wit and Drollery (1682), p. 64, and in Old Ballads (1725), ii. 196. The tune is given in the Skene MS. preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and a ballad in the Bagford collection in the British Museum, entitled 'Hubert's Ghost,' is written 'to the tune of Basse's Career.' Basse's second ballad, 'Tom of Bedlam,' has been identified by Sir Harris Nicolas in his edition of Walton's 'Angler,' with a song of the same name in Percy's Reliques,' ii. 357; but many other ballads bear the same title. In 1636 Basse contributed a poem to the Annalia Dubrensia.