Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) was an Elizabethan playwright poet and satirist, but made his name as a pamphleteer. Pierce Penilesse was his most popular pamphlet and Summer's Last Will and Testament is a play of sorts, but the interesting thing about these two works were that they were probably written in 1592 the year that the plague struck London resulting in the closure of the theatres. The closure of the theatres meant that many avid theatre goers especially those people of leisure suddenly had afternoons to fill and Nashe was able to profit from this by supplying reading material, which may have been a substitute for live theatre performances. This is especially true of Summer's Last Will and Testament which although written as a Performance play has no action (apart from people entering and leaving the stage) and serves just as well as a piece of rhetoric to be read aloud by a small group of people.

Thomas Nashe is not easy for 21st century readers because of: his use of satire, his expectation that readers will be familiar with recent artistic and historical events and his use of Latin Phrases. He has however abandoned the over elaborate style of John LIly, which in my opinion was becoming tedious to strike out with his own less formal sentence structure. This makes his writing more readable, but his use of allegory, his satire and his tendency to wander off into side issues and ambiguity, (sometimes in the same sentence) does not always make it easy to follow. It was a text where I found myself re-reading previous sentences to discover how I had got so lost in what the author was saying.

Pierce Penilesse, His supplication to the Devil is a prose satire in which Pierce makes a written request to serve the devil in hell, because of his miserable circumstances. He is an educated man; a poet who has failed to gain patronage or make a decent living from his writing. He is proud, sometimes naive and feeling vengeful:

"But beware you that be great mens Favorites: let not a servile insinuating slave creepe betwixt your legs into credit with your Lords: for pesants that come out of the colde of povertie, once cherisht in the bosome of prosperitie, will straight forget that ever there was a winter of want, or who gave them roome to warme them.".....................With the enemies of Poetrie, I care not if I haue a bout, and those are they that tearme our best Writers but babling Ballat-makers, holding them fantasticall fooles"

Nashe seems to make an exception for actors and stage performers, but one can never be sure how much is ironical. Nashe then goes on to describe the the seven deadly sins one by one with plenty of examples and with the underlying motif that those people who have given into them have brought down the plague on London. Pierce has found someone who he thinks is an emissary from the devil (found in St Pauls courtyard; a place where printers and pamphleteers sold their wares) and asks him what it is like in hell. Of course he does not get a straight answer, but is told that people by their actions create their own hell wherever they are. This is an interesting idea, but Nashe does not really follow this through, instead he launches into a tale of the wicked bear and the fox, which would probably have kept contemporary readers wondering who they were meant to depict. It has certainly exercised the minds of scholars of more recent times.

Thomas Nashe was an author of one of the more famous Marprelate pamphlets earlier in his writing career; taking the side of the bishops who were under attack from the puritans. Satire, irony in-jokes and scurrilously libel prose were the stock in trade for these pieces and there is something of this in Pierce Penilesse.

Summers last Will and Testament is a more lighthearted affair, but contains plenty of satirical barbs aimed at authors and those that patronise them. Will Summers was a famous court jester at the time of Henry VIII and he makes an appearance in this play. Summer is coming to an end and he is the Lord of the seasons and he summons Spring, Autumn and Winter and asks them in turn to make a case to receive his legacy. Significantly Winter is blamed for providing the circumstances in which the plague would flourish:

Autumne hath all the Summers fruitefull treasure,
Gone is our sport, fled is poore Croydens pleasure:
Short dayes, sharpe dayes, long nights come on a pace,
Ah who shall hide vs, from the Winters face?
Colde dooth increase, the sicknesse will not cease,
And here we lye God knowes, with little ease:
From winter, plague & pestilence, good Lord deliver vs.

Summoned onto the stage also are: Time, Sol the sun, Bachus the god of wine, Orion the Hunter and Harvest. All are quizzed as to their part in providing the conditions for sickness and disease and their part in mans downfall. They all vigorously defend themselves and Autumn, Winter and Spring are careful to disassociate themselves. There are songs and music as Nashe tries to entertain rather than lecture. There are more latin phrases used and casual references to classical literature point to a court entertainment. It was performed in the Bishops Palace at Croydon in the early autumn of 1592 and was revived for the first time in 2017 in the same venue. It seems to have been successful.

For 21st century readers Nashe is not easy to read without some background knowledge - 3 stars.
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