A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Viii Part 1

A Select Collection of Old English Plays.

Vol. VIII.

by Various.

SUMMER'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

EDITION.

_A pleasant Comedie, called Summer's last will and Testament. Written by Thomas Nash. Imprinted at London by Simon Stafford, for Water Burre_.

1600. 4to.

[COLLIER'S PREFACE.]

[Thomas Nash, son of William Nash, minister, and Margaret his wife, was baptized at Lowestoft, in Suffolk, in November 1567.[1] He was admitted a scholar at St John's College, Cambridge, on the Lady Margaret's foundation, in 1584, and proceeded B.A. in 1585:] the following is a copy of the Register:--

"Tho. Nashe Coll. Joh. Cantab. A.B. ib. 1585." The place, though not the time, of his birth[2] we have under his own authority, for in his "Lenten Stuff," printed in 1599, he informs us that he was born at Lowestoft; and he leads us to conclude that his family was of some note, by adding that his "father sprang from the Nashes of Herefords.h.i.+re."[3]

It does not appear that Nash ever proceeded Master of Arts at Cambridge, and most of his biographers agree that he left his college about 1587.

It is evident, however, that he had got into disgrace, and probably was expelled; for the author of "England to her three Daughters" in "Polimanteia," 1595, speaking of Harvey and Nash, and the pending quarrel between them, uses these terms: "Cambridge make thy two children friends: _thou hast been unkind to the one to wean him before his time_, and too fond upon the other to keep him so long without preferment: the one is ancient and of much reading; the other is young, but full of wit."[4] The cause of his disgrace is reported to have been the share he took in a piece called "Terminus et non Terminus," not now extant; and it is not denied that his partner in this offence was expelled. Most likely, therefore, Nash suffered the same punishment.

If Nash be the author of "An Almond for a Parrot," of which there is little doubt, although his name is not affixed to it, he travelled in Italy;[5] and we find from another of his pieces that he had been in Ireland. Perhaps he went abroad soon after he abandoned Cambridge, and before he settled in London and became an author. His first appearance in this character seems to have been in 1589, and we believe the earliest date of any tract attributed to him relating to Martin Marprelate is also 1589.[6] He was the first, as has been frequently remarked, to attack this enemy of the Church with the keen missiles of wit and satire, throwing aside the lumbering and unserviceable weapons of scholastic controversy. Having set the example in this respect, he had many followers and imitators, and among them John Lily, the dramatic poet, the author of "Pap with a Hatchet."

In London Nash became acquainted with Robert Greene, and their friends.h.i.+p drew him into a long literary contest with Gabriel Harvey, to which Nash owes much of his reputation. It arose out of the posthumous attack of Harvey upon Robert Greene, of which sufficient mention has been made elsewhere. Nash replied on behalf of his dead companion, and reiterated the charge which had given the original offence to Harvey, viz., that his brother was the son of a ropemaker.[7] One piece was humorously dedicated to Richard Litchfield, a barber of Cambridge, and Harvey answered it under the a.s.sumed character of the same barber, in a tract called "The Trimmino of Thomas Nash,"[8] which also contained a woodcut of a man in fetters. This representation referred to the imprisonment of Nash for an offence he gave by writing a play (not now extant) called "The Isle of Dogs," and to this event Francis Meres alludes in his "Palladia Tamia," 1598, in these terms: "As Actaeon was worried of his own hounds, so is Tom Nash of his 'Isle of Dogs.' Dogs were the death of Euripides; but be not disconsolate, gallant young Juvenal; Linus, the son of Apollo, died the same death. Yet G.o.d forbid, that so brave a wit should so basely peris.h.!.+--Thine are but paper dogs; neither is thy banishment like Ovid's eternally to converse with the barbarous _Getes_. Therefore comfort thyself, sweet Tom, with Cicero's glorious return to Rome, and with the council Aeneas gives to his sea-beaten soldiers." Lib. I. Aeneid.

"Pluck up thine heart, and drive from thence both fear and care away: To think on this may pleasure be, perhaps, another day."

--_Durato, et temet rebus servato secundis_. (fol. 286.)

This was in part verified in the next year, for when Nash published his "Lenten Stuff," he referred with apparent satisfaction to his past troubles in consequence of his "Isle of Dogs."[9]

So much has been said, especially by Mr D'Israeli in his "Quarrels of Authors," on the subject of this dispute between Nash and Harvey, that it is unnecessary to add anything, excepting that it was carried to such a length, and the pamphlets contained so much scurrility, that it was ordered from authority in 1599 that all the tracts on both sides should be seized and suppressed.[10]

As with Greene, so with Nash, an opinion on his moral conduct and general deportment has been too readily formed from the a.s.sertions of his opponents; and because Gabriel Harvey, to answer a particular purpose, states, "You may be in one prison to-day and in another to-morrow," it has been taken for granted, that "after his arrival in London, he was often confined in different jails." No doubt, he and his companions Greene, Marlowe, and Peele, led very disorderly lives, and it is singular that all four died prematurely, the oldest of them probably not being forty years of age. It is certain that Nash was not living at the time when the "Return from Parna.s.sus" was produced, which, though not printed until 1606, was written before the end of the reign of Elizabeth: his ashes are there spoken of as at rest, but the mention of him as dead, nearest to the probable date of that event, is to be found in [Fitzgeoffrey's "Affaniae," 1601, where an epitaph upon him is printed. His name also occurs in] an anonymous poem, under the t.i.tle of "The Ant and the Nightingale, or Father Hubbard's Tales," 1604, where the following stanza is met with--

"Or if in bitterness thou rail like Nash: Forgive me, honest soul, that term thy phrase _Railing_; for in thy works thou wert not rash, Nor didst affect in youth thy private praise.

Thou hadst a strife with that Tergemini;[11]

Thou hurt'dst them not till they had injured thee."[12]

The author of a MS. epitaph, in "Bibl. Sloan," Pl. XXI. A. was not so squeamish in the language he employed--

"Here lies Tom Nash, that notable _railer_, That in his life ne'er paid shoemaker nor tailor."

The following from Thomas Freeman's Epigrams, 1614, is not out of its place--

OF THOMAS NASH.

"Nash, had Lycambes on earth living been The time thou wast, his death had been all one; Had he but mov'd thy tartest Muse to spleen Unto the fork he had as surely gone: For why? there lived not that man, I think, Us'd better or more bitter gall in ink."

It is impossible in the present day to attempt anything like a correct list of the productions of Nash, many of which were unquestionably printed without his name:[13] the t.i.tles of and quotations from a great number may be found in the various bibliographical miscellanies, easily accessible. When he began to write cannot be ascertained, but it was most likely soon after his return from the Continent, and the dispute between John Penry and the Bishops seems then to have engaged his pen.[14] There is one considerable pamphlet by him, called "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," printed in 1593, which, like some of the tracts by Greene, is of a repentant and religious character; and it has been said that, though published with his name, it was not in fact his production. There is no sufficient ground for this supposition, and Nash never subsequently disowned the performance: the address "To the Reader"

contains an apology to Gabriel Harvey for the attack upon him, in terms that seem to vouch for their own sincerity. "Nothing (says Nash) is there now so much in my vows as to be at peace with all men, and make submissive amends where I most displeased; not basely fear-blasted, or constraintively overruled, but purely pacificatory: suppliant for reconciliation and pardon do I sue to the princ.i.p.allest of them 'gainst whom I professed utter enmity; even of Master Doctor Harvey I heartily desire the like, whose fame and reputation (through some precedent injurious provocations and fervent excitements of young heads) I rashly a.s.sailed: yet now better advised, and of his perfections more confirmedly persuaded, unfeignedly I entreat of the whole world from my pen his worth may receive no impeachment. All acknowledgments of abundant scholars.h.i.+p, courteous, well-governed behaviour, and ripe, experienced judgment do I attribute to him."

We have already seen with what malignity Harvey trampled upon the corpse of Greene, and he received this apology of Nash in a corresponding spirit; for instead of accepting it, in his "New Letter of Notable Contents," 1593, he rejects it with scorn: "Riotous vanity (he replies) was wont to root so deeply that it could hardly be unrooted; and where reckless impudency taketh possession, it useth not very hastily to be dispossessed. What say you to a spring of rankest villainy in February, and a harvest of ripest divinity in May? But what should we hereafter talk any more of paradoxes or impossibilities, when he that penned the most desperate and abominable pamphlet of 'Strange News,' and disgorged his stomach of as poisonous rancour as ever was vomited in print, within few months is won, or charmed, or enchanted, (or what metamorphosis should I term it?) to astonish carnal minds with spiritual meditations," &c. Such a reception of well-intended and eloquently-written amends was enough to make Nash repent even his repentance, as far as Gabriel Harvey was concerned.[15]

Of the popularity of Nash as a writer some notion may be formed from a fact he himself mentions in his "Have with you to Saffron Walden," that between 1592, when his "Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil"

was first printed, and 1596 it "pa.s.sed through the pikes of at least six impressions." How long his reputation as a satirist survived him may be judged from the fact that in 1640 Taylor the Water Poet published a tract, which had for its second t.i.tle "Tom Nash, his Ghost (the old Martin queller), newly rouz'd:" and in _Mercurius Anti-pragmaticus_, from Oct. 12 to Oct. 19, 1647, is the following pa.s.sage: "Perhaps you will be angry now, and when you steal forth disguised, in your next intelligence thunder forth threatenings against me, and be as satirical in your language as ever was your predecessor Nash, who compiled a learned treatise in the praise of a red herring."

Only two plays in which Nash had any concern have come down to us: his "Isle of Dogs," before noticed, was probably never printed, or at all events it is not now known to exist. He wrote alone--

(1.) A pleasant Comedy called "Summer's Last Will and Testament."

1600. 4to.

In conjunction with Marlowe he produced--

(2.) "The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage," played by the children of her Majesty's chapel. 1594. 4to.

Phillips, in his "Theatrum Poetarum," also a.s.signed to Nash, "See me, and see me not," a comedy, which may be a different play, and not, as has been generally supposed, "Hans Beer Pot;" because, the name of the author, Dawbridgecourt Belchier, being subscribed to the dedication, such a mistake could not easily be made.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

WILL SUMMER.

VER.

SUMMER.

AUTUMN.

WINTER.

CHRISTMAS, _Sons to WINTER_.

BACKWINTEB. SOL.

SOLSt.i.tIUM.

VERTUMNUS.

ORION.

BACCHUS.

HARVEST.

SATIRES.

NYMPHS.

_Three_ CLOWNS.

_Three_ MAIDS.