Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson.

Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group, over whether the Tudor poet Thomas Watson was the person who wrote under the pen-name Shakespeare. Particularly interesting because McCarthy brings up a poem from Watson's Hekatompathia that is clearly related to Shakespeare sonnet 130. In fact, 130 is assuredly a direct reply to Watson's poem.

Neither debater seems to have read my Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal¹, in which I go into some considerable detail about Watson and his close relationship personally and poetically with Edward de Vere. Works by both poets appeared in the anthology section of the 1573 An Hundredth Sundrie Flowers which book is the central focus of my own.

Hekatompathia, the Watson work in question, is tellingly dedicated:

To the Right Honorable my very good Lord Edward de Vere, Earle of Oxenford, Vicount Bulbecke, Lord of Escales, and Badlesmere, and Lord High Chamberlaine of England, all happinesse.

The following is an excerpt from the letter to Vere that followed:

For since the world hath understood, (I know not how) that your Honor had willinglie voutchsafed the acceptance of this worke, and at convenient leisures favourablie perused it, being as yet but in written hand, many have oftentimes and earnestly called upon mee, to put it to the presse, that for their mony they might but see, what your Lordship with some liking had alreadie perused.

Watson tells the reader that he is publishing Hekatompathia because his friend, the Earl of Oxford, had read the poems in manuscript and passed around word that they were exceptional work. Edward de Vere had read the poems, Watson tells us, sometime during the years immediately prior to their publication in 1582.² Shakespeare seems to have at much the same time: Sonnet 130 being a reply to number VII in Watson's book.

Watson had translated from the highly popular love poems of Petrarch. The Hekatompathia is decidedly a Petrarchan work. But, circa 1580, the anti-Petrarchan movement was far more popular in Italy. The peak of love poetry there was anti-Petrarchan. Anti-Petrarchism, however, never did become as popular in England — which looked to Italy for the latest literary fashions — Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is one of the great English anti-Petrarchan poems. Hamlet's screeds against women were very much a product of anti-Petrarchism as I've pointed out in my Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff.³ In Hamlet, Shakespeare even walked up to the edge of the pornography upon which the ultimate anti-Petrarchan Pietro Aretino lived.

This, of course, is powerful support for the assertion, in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof and Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say?, that the earliest sonnets of Shakespeare were composed circa 1580 (not 1590).⁴ Sonnet 130 was likely written circa 1580 — poetic replies being written far more often than not shortly after the poem to which they reply.

And now for the poems:

Watson's Hekatompathia VII

HArke you that list to heare what sainte I serve:

Her yellowe lockes exceede the beaten goulde;

Her sparkeling eies in heav'n a place deserve;

Her forehead high and faire of comely moulde;

Her wordes are musicke all of silver sounde;

Her wit so sharpe as like can scarse be found:

Each eybrowe hanges like Iris in the skies;

Her Eagles nose is straight of stately frame;

On either cheeke a Rose and Lillie lies;

Her breath is sweete perfume, or hollie flame;

Her lips more red then any Corall stone;

Her necke more white, then aged Swans yat mone;

Her brest transparent is, like Christall rocke;

Her singers long, fit for Apolloes Lute;

Her slipper such as Momus dare not mocke;

Her vertues all so great as make me mute:

What other partes she hath I neede not say,

Whose face alone is cause of my decaye.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130

MY Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,

Currall is farre more red, then her lips red,

If snow be white, why then her brests are dun:

If haires be wiers, black wiers grow on her head:

I have seene Roses damaskt, red and white,

But no such Roses see I in her cheekes,

And in some perfumes is there more delight,

Then in the breath that from my Mistres reekes.

I love to heare her speake, yet well I know,

That Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound:

I graunt I never saw a goddesse goe,

My Mistres when shee walkes treads on the ground.

And yet by heaven I thinke my love as rare,

As any she beli’d with false compare.

The connections between the poetry of Watson and Shakespeare by no means end here. I'll be adding more such connections to those I've presented in Shakespeare in 1573 in the weeks ahead. The relationship between the poets and the poetries is particularly instructive in a number of ways.... and it goes a long way toward proving that Edward de Vere wrote the works of Shakespeare.

1 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14

2 Arber, Edward. Thomas Watson Poems (1910). 9. “The registration entry of it runs thus—

"31 Mar. 1582. Mr. Cawoode. Licenced to him, &c., Watsons

Passions, manifestinge the true frenzy of loue...

J. P. Collier. Ext. from Regs, of Stat. Co. ii. 162. Ed. 1849.”

3 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589 (2022). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WC94FGW

4 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof (2013, 2017). https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/ and Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say? (2015). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TWPBPP8/

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”

• On Shakespeare's lameness and historical-fiction biography, etc. August 5, 2023. “Those who support Sogliardo of Stratford and other authorship candidates generally stop by from time to time to remark...”

• Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
• A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.