He was one of the most celebrated English playwrights of the 16th century, yet none of his plays survived, and today the name of Thomas Watson is virtually unknown.
Now the writer, poet and pioneer of the English madrigal — who also saved the life of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in a street brawl — is being seen in a new light.
Watson has been identified as the most likely primary author of Arden of Faversham, the first domestic tragedy in English, which was published anonymously in 1592. Many academics believe that five of the play’s scenes were coauthored with William Shakespeare.
Based on a notorious murder of 1551, Arden is about a woman from Faversham, Kent, who conspires with her lover to kill her husband and struggles to “wash away this blood,” just like Lady Macbeth.
Over five years of research, Gary Taylor, a leading Shakespeare scholar, has found stylistic, biographical and historical links to Watson in almost every scene. He concluded that there is “strong and consistent evidence” for his authorship.
Watson was a polymath whose talents extended from writing poetry in Latin to creating the first published set of English madrigals. In 1595, Shakespeare was described as “Watson’s heire” by William Clerke, in a work titled Polimanteia, but only recently have scholars even realized that Watson was a playwright.
“Almost everything Watson did was original,” said Taylor, the Pryor Professor in Shakespearean Literature at Florida State University and general editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare. “Even specialists only know one tiny aspect of his work, instead of putting it all together.”
Taylor’s new research is to be published in The Review of English Studies later this year.
“We’re looking for a writer who is capable of writing a great play. Watson was greatly admired at the time, celebrated for tragic plays before Marlowe or Shakespeare became famous,” he said.
Taylor has compared Arden with Watson’s surviving literary prose and poetry, using databases of playwrights working between 1585 and 1595, and says that “some features of Arden are shared with no one but Watson.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS