Shakespearean tragedy

The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their sources were foreign and ancient, they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories.

They share some elements of tragedy, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies.

Additionally, tragedy was a new and exciting theatrical phenomenon in the late 16th century, rather than an established and self-evident dramatic form; because of this, Shakespeare and his contemporaries' plays did not necessary fit into a single genre.

[4] In Elizabethan England there was no copyright law or protections against plagiarism, so characters, plots, and even whole phrases of poetry were considered common property.

[8] Some events that happen in Shakespeare's King Lear were inspired by various episodes of Philip Sidney's Arcadia from 1590, while the nonsensical musings of Edgar's "poor Tom" heavily reference Samuel Harsnett's 1603 book, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures.