Shakespeare's tragedies are usually remembered for the central characters for whom they are named. However, the fact that all of their heroes are what in the period were termed 'princes', occupying the power centres of their realms, means that these narratives of usurpation and death are also anatomies of political crises. In setting out contexts for his tales of woe or wonder Shakespeare reveals himself to have been as curious about the make-up of courts and kingdoms as he was about the psychology of individuals. The sufferings of great men and women in Shakespearean tragedy derive from conflicts, the analysis of which inevitably entails a consideration of 'the properties of government' – its characteristics and its proprieties. In 1589, at about the time Shakespeare was beginning to write, George Puttenham observed that ‘poets . . . were the first lawmakers to the people, and the first politicians, devising all expedient means for th’establishment of commonwealth’. Although in his tragedies Shakespeare may concentrate far more on rulers than on the ruled, ‘commonwealth’ interests are inevitably invoked by the fact that any act on the part of a king is de facto what, in Hamlet, Claudius terms ‘sovereign process’ (4.3.65).