William Shakespeare
As a man, Shakespeare emerges as someone who grew up in the country and has a tremendous admiration for nature, but also someone who has moved to London and survived while cultivating a permanent scepticism about the use and abuse of power. He exhibits the attitudes of someone who is middle class, with access to real power, how it speaks and operates, but who also has a genuine feeling for the less-off. You see this in his plays – instances of this random humanity, which are so very moving.