Thomas Watson (poet) - English Poetry

English Poetry

The following year Watson appears for the first time as an English poet in some verses prefixed to George Whetstone's Heptameron, and also in a far more important work, as the author of the Hecatompathia or Passionate Centurie of Love, dedicated to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who had read the poems in manuscript and encouraged Watson to publish them. Also entitled Watson's Passion the work contains over 100 poems in French and Italian styles, including a number of translations. The technical peculiarity of these interesting poems is that, although they appear and profess to be sonnets, they are written in triple sets of common six-line stanza, and therefore have eighteen lines each.

He was recognized for his poetic "Methods and motifs" which occurred between 1580 and 1590. He was held in high regard by his contemporaries even though his style was very similar to his late 15th and early 16th century Italian Predecessors Sannazaro and Strozzi. He openly drew from Petrarch and Ronsard, with what Sidney Lee describes as "drops of water from Petrarach and Ronsard's fountains." Watson seriously desired to recommend his 18 line form to future sonneteers; but in this he had no imitators. Nevertheless, according to The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Watson's sonnets "appear to have been studied by Shakespeare and other contemporaries."