Unlike those those cunning conspiracy theorists who posit that the Stratfordian man could not have written the works we attribute to "Shakespeare," William Basse (c. 1583 - c. 1653), an Oxford student and near contemporary seems to have been possessed of the mistaken idea that he did, because he wrote an elegy based upon that assumption sometime between 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, and 1623, the year when the First Folio was published. The elegy is little known and, truth be told, pretty dismal poetry, but it is yet another contemporary testimony to Shakespeare as author of Shakespeare. Here it is, taken from The Poetical Works of William Basse, ed. R. Warwick Bond, Ellis and Elvy, 1893, from Google Book Search, in full text and PDF. The work is also available from the Internet Archive. This version is from the "Lansdowne MS."
ELEGY ON SHAKESPEARE,
ON MR. WM. SHAKESPEARE.
HE DYED IN APRILL l6l6.
RENOWNED Spencer lye a thought more nye
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumond lye
A little neerer Spenser, to make roome
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe.
To lodge all fowre in one bed make a shift
Vntill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt ys day and yt by Fate be slayne,
For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe.
If your precedency in death doth barre
A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,
Vnder this carued marble of thine owne,
Sleepe, rare Tragoedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone;
Thy unmolested peace, vnshared Caue,
Possesse as Lord, not Tenant, of thy Graue,
That vnto us & others it may be
Honor hereafter to be layde by thee.
WM. BASSE.
See Bond's introductory materials and notes for the various manuscript versions available and their publication histories. Interestingly, it was printed in the 1633 edition of the poems of John Donne, and also the 1640 version of Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare, Gent. (from the Rare Book Room), subscribed to "W. B."
We know the elegy was written prior to 1623, because in his commendatory poem to the First Folio,
"To the memory of my beloved, The Author Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us," Ben Jonson says:
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome :
Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
Perhaps someone should have mentioned to Ben, also, who knew and loved the man, that Shakepeare was, gentle as he may have seemed, was but a crafty deceiver and not the author!
By the way, the Wikipedia article on Basse is a stub with a brief and incorrect note: "William Basse (c.1583-1653/4) was an English poet. He was a follower of Edmund Spenser. He is now remembered mostly for an eulogy he wrote about Shakespeare that was published in the First Folio (1623)." It was not published in ther First Folio or second (1632), third (1663-64) or fourth (1685) Folios, but only referenced there.
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