Note 129 — IX—THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

Mr. Tyler assigns this sonnet to the year 1598 or later, on the fallacious ground that this line was probably imitated from an expression in Marston’s Pigmalion’s Image, published in 1598, where ‘stanzas’ are said to ‘march rich bedight in warlike equipage.’ The suggestion of plagiarism is quite gratuitous. The phrase was common in Elizabethan literature long before Marston employed it. Nash, in his preface to Green’s Menaphon, which was published in 1589, wrote that the works of the poet Watson ‘march in equipage of honour with any of your ancient poets.’