Thomas Watson

Thomas Watson 1557?-1592, English poet and scholar. He translated into Latin the Antigone of Sophocles and the Aminta of Tasso and wrote The Hecatompathia; or, Passionate Century of Love (1582), one of the earliest collections of sonnets in English.

Watson, Thomas (c.1557–92), published a Latin version of the Antigone of Sophocles, with an appendix of Latin allegorical poems and experiments in classical metres (1581). His most important work was The Ἑκατομπαθια or Passionate Centurie of Love (1582), 18-line poems, called sonnets, often based on classical, French, and Italian sources, and accompanied by learned explanatory notes. He published a Latin version of Tasso's Aminta (1585) and The First Sett of Italian Madrigalls Englished (1590), which were set to music by William Byrd. A few of his previously unpublished poems were included in The Phoenix Nest and Englands Helicon. His ‘sonnets’, among the earliest in English, were an influence on Shakespeare and others.