{\b Thomas Nashe}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1567

{\b Date of Death}.: 1601

{\b Works}.

Playwright and artist. His first published work was a preface to Greene's 
Menaphon (1589) which attacked the follies of contemporary literature. He then 
became embroiled in the Martin Marprelate controversy and wrote a series of 
savagely anti-Puritan works.

Christs' Teares over Jerusalem (1593), a religious meditation was written for 
Lady Elizabeth Carey and was followed by The Terrors of Night a treatise on 
dreams.

His other works include the satirical Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592) 
and the gentler The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). His satirical comedy The 
Isle of Dogs (1597), now lost, angered the authorities and led to a period of 
imprisonment.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Spring', "Adieu, Farewell Earth's Bliss".

{\b General Comment}.

Thomas Nashe was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk. He studied at St John's College 
Cambridge and travelled widely in France and Italy before coming to London and 
involving himself in the Martin Marprelate controversy. The Martin Marprelate 
Pamphlets were a series of satirical tracts attacking the Bishops. Nashe was 
involved in the production of several anti-Martinist pamphlets in the early 
1590's which established his talent for vituperation (skill in the use of 
abusive reproaches). The controversy raged on until 1599 during which time he 
focused his efforts on attacking the writers Richard and Gabriel Harvey who 
had criticised Nashe's mentor Robert Greene. 'Pierce Pennilesse, his 
Supplication to the Devil' (1592) was the first of Nashe's viscous attacks 
which culminated in 'Have with you to Saffron-Walden' (1596).

Nashe then turned to a variety of other literary pursuits. The Unfortunate 
Traveller was a picturesque tail laced with literary parody and the use of the 
mock-heroic. It was the first of its kind and remains his most famous work. 
After the death of the playwright Christopher Marlowe Nashe prepared his 
unfinished tragedy Dido, Queen of Carthage (1596) for the stage.

The satirical comedy The Isle of Dogs (1597), written jointly with Jonson, 
provoked the authorities into closing down the theatre and throwing Nashe into 
Fleet prison. His last work Nashes Lenten Stuffe (1599) was a comic eulogy 
(false appraisal) on the red herring, or kipper.