Summer's Last Will and Testament

By Thomas Nashe

This early work by Thomas Nashe was originally published in 1600 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Summer's Last Will and Testament' is an Elizabethan era stage play that broke new ground in the development of English Renaissance drama. Thomas Nashe was born in November 1567. He was an English Elizabethan Pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist, but little is known with certainty about his life. Much of the information we have has been inferred from his writings. Nashe's first appearance in print was his preface to Robert Greene's Menaphon (1589), in which he offers a brief definition of art and an overview of contemporary literature. His early exercise in euphuism The Anatomy of Absurdity was published in the same year. From then on Nashe became involved in numerous political and religious causes, including the Martin Marprelate controversy where he sided with the bishops. Nashe offers an important insight into the workings of 16th century English life and his writings will continue to be studied for both their literary content and historical relevance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473365452

Book preview

Summer’s Last Will and Testament

BY

Thomas Nash

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe is considered to be one of the greatest of the English Elizabethan pamphleteers. He was also a playwright, poet and satirist. Nashe was the son of Parson William Nashe and Margaret (née Witchingham), born in 1567 and baptised in November of that year. He was one of seven children and spent his early life at Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. Nashe was lucky however, as, alongside his brother Israel, he was one of the only two children to survive infancy. In 1573, the family moved to West Harling, near Thetford after Nashe’s father was awarded a position at the Church of All Saints.

Around 1581, Thomas Nashe went up to St John’s College, Cambridge as a sizar, gaining his bachelor’s degree in 1586. He left Cambridge two years later, in 1588. After receiving his education, Nashe moved to London and started his literary career in earnest. The remaining decade of his life was dominated by two concerns: finding an adequate patron and participating in controversies, most famously with Richard and Gabriel Harvey. Nashe’s first appearance in print was his preface to Robert Greene’s Menaphon, which offers a brief definition of art and overview of contemporary literature. After this (and the publication of Anatomy) he was drawn into the Martin Marprelate controversy (resulting from several anonymous tracts that attacked the episcopacy of the Anglican Church). Nashe was on the side of the bishops. As with the other writers in the controversy, his share is difficult to determine. He was formerly credited with the three ‘Pasquill’ tracts of 1589–1590, which were included in R. B. McKerrow’s standard edition of Nashe’s works, however McKerrow himself later strongly argued against Nashe’s authorship.

In contrast to these religious and political concerns, Nashe also took on more ‘earthly’ subjects. Sometime in the early 1590s, he produced an erotic poem, The Choice of Valentines that begins with a sonnet to ‘Lord S’. It has been suggested that The Choice of Valentines was written possibly for the private circle of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby (then known as Lord Strange). It has alternatively been suggested that ‘Lord S’ refers to the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron. It describes the Valentine’s Day visit of a young man named ‘Tomalin’ to the brothel where his lover, ‘Mistris Francis’, has recently become employed. Tomalin poses as a customer and having paid ten gold pieces for her favours, Tomalin makes his way towards his erotic goal. As can be imagined, the text caused quite a stir!

Nashe’s friendship with Robert Greene (the author of Menaphon, for which Nashe provided the preface) drew Nashe into the Harvey controversy, involving the brothers Richard and Gabriel Harvey. In 1590, Richard Harvey’s The Lamb of God complained of the anti-Martinist pamphleteers in general, including a side-swipe at the Menaphon preface. Two years later, Greene’s A Quip for an Upstart Courtier contained a passage on ‘rope makers’ that clearly refers to the Harveys (whose father made ropes). The passage, which was removed from subsequent editions, may have been Nashe’s. After Gabriel Harvey mocked Greene’s death in Four Letters, Nashe wrote Strange News (1593). Nashe attempted to apologise in the preface to Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem (1593), but the appearance of Pierce’s Supererogation shortly after offended Nashe anew. He replied with Have with You to Saffron-Walden (1596), with a possibly sardonic dedication to Richard Lichfield, a barber of Cambridge. Harvey did not publish a reply, but Lichfield answered in a tract called ‘The Trimming of Thomas Nash’ (1597). This pamphlet also contained a crude woodcut portrait of Nashe, shown as a man disreputably dressed and in fetters.

Alongside this running dispute, Nashe produced his more famous works. While staying in the household of Archbishop John Whitgift at Croydon in October 1592, he wrote an entertainment called Summer’s Last Will and Testament, a ‘show’ with some resemblance to a masque. In brief, the plot describes the death of Summer, who, feeling himself to be dying, reviews the performance of his former servants and eventually passes the crown on to Autumn. The play was published in 1600. Nashe is widely remembered for three short poems, all drawn from this play and frequently reprinted in anthologies of Elizabethan verse: ‘Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss,’ ‘Fair summer droops’ and ‘Autumn hath all the summer’s fruitful treasure.’ Moving on from this success, in 1597 Nashe co-wrote the play The Isle of Dogs with Ben Jonson. The work caused a major controversy for its ‘seditious’ content and was quickly suppressed, never to be published.

The chronology of Nashe’s last days is uncertain. He was alive in 1599, when his last known work, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, was published, and dead by 1601, when he was memorialised in a Latin verse in Affaniae by Charles Fitzgeoffrey. A recent book has provided linguistic and other evidence to support a theory that Thomas Nashe re-entered London as ‘Thomas Dekke’" after he was banished from the city in the summer of