1595. Menaecmi, A pleasant and fine Conceited Comædie, taken out of the most excellent wittie Poet Plautus: Chosen purposely from out the rest, as least harmefull, and yet most delightfull. Written in
English, by W. W. Thomas Creede, sold by William Barley. [Epistle by the Printer to the Readers; Argument.] Editions by J. Nichols (1779, Six Old Plays, i), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. L. ii. 1), and W. H. D. Rouse (1912, Sh. Classics). This translation is generally supposed to have influenced the Comedy of Errors. If so, Shakespeare must have had access to it in manuscript, and it must have been available before c. 1592. The epistle speaks of Warner as 'having diverse of this Poetes Comedies Englished, for the use and delight of his private friends, who in Plautus owne words are not able to understand them'. No others are known. THOMAS WATSON (c. 1557-92). An Oxford man, who took no degree, and a lawyer, who did not practise, Watson became an elegant writer of English and Latin verse. He won the patronage of Walsingham at Paris in 1581, and became a member of the literary circle of Lyly and Peele. His most important volume of verse is the Hekatompathia (1582) dedicated to the Earl of Oxford. At the time of his death in Sept. 1592 he was in the service of William Cornwallis, who afterwards wrote to Heneage that he 'could devise twenty fictions and knaveryes in a play which was his daily practyse and his living' (Athenaeum, 23 Aug. 1890). This suggests that the poet, and not the episcopal author of Absalon (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 458), is the Watson included by Meres in 1598 amongst our 'best for Tragedie'. But his plays, other than translations, must, if they exist, be sought amongst the anonymous work of 1581-92, where it would be an interesting task to reconstruct his individuality. In Ulysses upon Ajax (1596) Harington's anonymous critic says of his etymologies of Ajax, 'Faith, they are trivial, the froth of witty Tom Watson's jests, I heard them in Paris fourteen years ago: besides what balductum [trashy] play is not full of them'. In the meantime Oliphant (M. P. viii. 437) has suggested that he may be the author of Thorny Abbey, or, The London Maid, printed by one R. D. with Haughton's Grim, the Collier of Croydon in Gratiae Theatrales (1662) and there assigned to T. W. Oliphant regards Thorny Abbey as clearly a late revision of an Elizabethan play.
TRANSLATION Antigone > 1581
S. R. 1581, July 31 (Bp. of London). 'Aphoclis Antigone, Thoma Watsono interprete.' John Wolfe (Arber, ii. 398).
1581. Sophoclis Antigone. Interprete Thoma Watsono I. V. studioso. Huic adduntur pompae quaedam, ex singulis Tragoediae actis deriuatae; & post eas, totidem themata sententiis refertissima; eodem Thoma Watsono Authore. John Wolf. [Latin translation. Verses to Philip Earl of Arundel, signed 'Thomas Watsonus'. Com-
