The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition), by Various, Edited by Robert Dodsley

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Title: A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition)

Author: Various

Release Date: December 15, 2003 [eBook #10467]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SELECT COLLECTION OF OLD ENGLISH PLAYS, VOL. VIII (4TH EDITION)***

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A SELECT COLLECTION OF OLD ENGLISH PLAYS, VOL. VIII

Fourth Edition

Originally published by Robert Dodsley in the Year 1744.

Now first chronologically arranged, revised and enlarged with the Notes of all the Commentators, and new Notes

By

W. CAREW HAZLITT

1874-1876.

CONTENTS:

Summer's Last Will and Testament
The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington
The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington
Contention between Liberality and Prodigality
Grim the Collier of Croydon.

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 Herefordshire."[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 friendship 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 assumed 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 God forbid, that so brave a wit should so basely perish!—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 assertions 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 Parnassus" 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 title of "The Ant and the