Customer Reviews

Cup of News: Life of Thomas Nashe

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Thomas Nashe was one of the sixteenth century 'university wits', a friend of Christopher Marlowe and, possibly, John Donne. Here Nicholl, who brought Marlowe himself to life in The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, doesn't quite manage the same alchemy for Nashe but it has to be admitted that he would have had a hard job given the lack of sources.

Nicholl does a good job of reconstructing the literary world in which Nashe lived: the pamphlet writers and proto-journalists rather than the playwrights like Shakespeare or the 'high' literary writers like Philip Sidney or Spenser. Unfortunately, where he falls down is in actually telling us anything about Nashe himself and he takes refuge in reading Nashe's variety of works as if they were autobiography. Apart from the fact that Nashe is an incredibly various writer, from the religious Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem to the bawdy (and quasi-pornographic) The Choice of Valentines, taking texts as barely hidden 'real life' is akin to assuming the lyrics of pop songs are autobiography.

So this is undoubtedly a good read for anyone interested in Renaissance literary culture or Nashe himself but all it amounts to, in the end, is guesswork, speculation and some very naive readings of texts. Worth reading but it has to all be taken with a very large pinch of salt.