Shadwell vs. Dryden. Swift vs. Smedley. Plath vs. Hughes. Many a rivalry has been played out in audaciously appropriative poetry. Shakespeare vs. Watson is surely one of the greatest mismatches, to be sure. A vernacular and Latin love poet, Watson seems to have enjoyed a fairly good reputation among his peers, particularly as an imitator of Petrarch. In 1582 he published a series of love sonnets, Hekatompathia, among which we find Sonnet VII: Hark you that list to hear what