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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