The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 3

by E. K. Chambers

S. R. 1616, Oct. 29. ‘A booke called the golden Fishing of the showes of Sir John Leman Lord Maiour.’ George Purslowe (Arber iii. 597).

1616. Chrysanaleia: The Golden Fishing: Or, Honour of Fishmongers. Applauding the aduancement of Mr. Iohn Leman, Alderman, to the dignitie of Lord Maior of London. Taking his Oath in the same authority at Westminster, on Tuesday, being the 29. day of October. 1616. Performed in hearty loue to him, and at the charges of his worthy Brethren, the ancient, and right Worshipfull Company of Fishmongers. Deuised and written by A. M. Citizen and Draper of London. George Purslowe.

Editions in Nichols, iii. 195, and by J. G. Nichols (1844, 1869) with reproductions of drawings for the pageant in the possession of the Fishmongers.

Doubtful Entertainment

The Campbell mayoral pageant of 1609 (q.v.) has been ascribed to Munday.

ROBERT NAILE (c. 1613).

Probable describer of the Bristol entertainment of Queen Anne in 1613 (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

THOMAS NASHE (1507–>1601).

Nashe was baptized at Lowestoft, Suffolk, in Nov. 1567, the son of William Nashe, minister, of a Herefordshire family. He matriculated from St. John’s, Cambridge, on 13 Oct. 1582, took his B.A. in 1586, and left the University probably in 1588. According to the Trimming (Harvey, iii. 67), he ‘had a hand in a Show called Terminus & non terminus, for which his partener in it was expelled the Colledge: but this foresaid Nashe played in it (as I suppose) the Varlet of Clubs; which he acted with such naturall affection, that all the spectators tooke him to be the verie same’. He went to London, and his first book, The Anatomie of Absurditie, was entered in S. R. on 19 Sept. 1588. In actual publication it was anticipated by an epistle ‘To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities’, which he prefixed to the Menaphon (1589) of Robert Greene (cf. App. C, No. xlii). This contains some pungent criticism of actors, with incidental depreciation of certain illiterate dramatists, among whom is apparently included Kyd, coupled with praise of Peele, and of other ‘sweete gentlemen’, who have ‘tricked vp a company of taffata fooles with their feathers’. Evidently Nashe had joined the London circle of University wits, and henceforth lived, partly by his pen, as dramatist and pamphleteer, and partly by services rendered to various patrons, amongst whom were Lord Strange, Sir George Carey, afterwards Lord Hunsdon, and Archbishop Whitgift. His connexion with this last was either the cause or the result of his employment, with other literary men, notably Lyly, in opposition to the anti-episcopalian tracts of Martin Marprelate and his fellows. His precise share in the controversy is uncertain. He has been credited with An Almond for a Parrot, with a series of writings under the name of Pasquil, and with other contributions, but in all cases the careful analysis of McKerrow, v. 49, finds the evidence quite inconclusive.

McKerrow, too, has given the best account (v. 65) of Nashe’s quarrel with Gabriel and Richard Harvey. This arose out of his association as an anti-Martinist with Lyly, between whom and Gabriel there was an ancient feud. It was carried on, in a vein of scurrilous personal raillery on both sides, from 1590 until it was suppressed as a public scandal in 1599. One of the charges against Nashe was his friendship with, and in the Harveian view aping of, Robert Greene, with whom, according to Gabriel’s Four Letters (Works, i. 170), Nashe took part in the fatal banquet of pickled herrings and Rhenish which brought him to his end. Nashe repudiated the charge of imitation, and spoke of Greene in Have With You to Saffron Walden (iii. 132), as ‘subscribing to mee in anything but plotting Plaies, wherein he was his crafts master’. Unless Dido is early work, no play written by Nashe before Greene’s death on 3 Sept. 1592 is known to us. But he is pretty clearly the ‘young Iuuenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastly with mee together writ a Comedie’ of Greene’s posthumous Groats-worth (cf. App. C, No. xlviii), and the tone of his own Defence of Plays in Pierce Penilesse of 1592 (cf. App. C, No. xlvi) as compared with that of the Menaphon epistle suggests that he had made his peace with the ‘taffata fooles’. His one extant unaided play belongs to the autumn of 1592, and was apparently for a private performance at Croydon. Internal evidence enables us to date in Aug.–Oct. 1596, and to ascribe to Nashe, in spite of the fact that his name at the foot is in a nineteenth-century writing, a letter to William Cotton (McKerrow, v. 192, from Cott. MS. Julius C. iii, f. 280) which shows that he was still writing for the stage and gives valuable evidence upon the theatrical crisis of that year (App. D, No. cv). To 1597 belongs the misadventure of The Isle of Dogs, which sent Nashe in flight to Great Yarmouth, and probably ended his dramatic career. He is mentioned as dead in C. Fitzgeffrey, Affaniae (1601).