on them to reward his efforts.

What gave Nashe’s literary career its largest boost was neither patrons nor the excellence of his ideas. What gave him the chance to display his vigorous style of writing and gained for him public attention was the famous Martin Marprelate controversy. The controversy, which was begun by a Puritan attack against the Anglican Church, centered on whether the Church should be ruled by a hierarchy of bishops or by the preachers. From the beginning, with the publication in 1572 of the Puritan pamphlet Admonition to Parliament, the Puritans had had the better of the argument, especially after an unusually gifted writer entered the lists on the side of the Puritans. This author, unfortunately but necessarily anonymous, called himself Martin Marprelate and wrote some eight pamphlets that effectively routed the less lively, less witty apologists for the Anglicans.

Nashe entered the lists against Martin on behalf of (and probably hired by) the prelates, writing An Almond for a Parrat (1590). Using the same type of invective, parody, hyperbole, and specious logic used by Martin, Nashe portrayed his adversary as a hypocrite, a heretic, and a traitor, an attack that drew a response from Gabriel Harvey, a friend of Edmund Spenser who, unlike Martin, was not anonymous, not without influence, and not as capable a writer as Nashe. It was in this battle of wits that Nashe found his place as a writer, low though the place was. Here the verbal street-fighter had the great good fortune to be attacked by a man of reputation who was his inferior both in wit and in writing ability. Beginning with a slap at Harvey in his preface to Greene’s A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592) and ending with Have with You to Saffron-Walden, Nashe earned a reputation and a fair living from his anti-Harvey prose. Finally, in 1599, Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift ordered a halt to future writings by both men and confiscated their existing works.

Nashe’s most important work is a picaresque novel published in 1594, The Unfortunate Traveller. A kind of pamphlet itself, but longer and more complex, the work was not particularly popular during his lifetime, but today it is his best-known work.

Nashe left London in 1597 when the authorities decided that The Isle of Dogs, a play he had begun and which Ben Jonson had finished, was “seditious.” Jonson was jailed and Nashe sought, but the famous pamphleteer had fled to Yarmouth, in Norfolk. By 1598 or early 1599, he had returned to London, where Nashe’s Lenten Stuffe was entered in the Stationers’ Register. After Nashe’s Lenten Stuffe, Nashe wrote no more, and in 1601 history records a reference to his death.

Thomas Nashe was born in November, 1567, the son of William Nashe, a minister in Lowestoft, Suffolk. Because no record exists of William’s being a university graduate, it can be assumed that he was probably a stipendiary curate in Lowestoft, not a vicar. Although the title pages of Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell and of Strange News of the Intercepting of Certain Letters refer to “Thomas Nashe, Gentleman,” Nashe himself denied that he was of gentle birth. From his earliest years, indeed, he disliked the propensity he found in middle-class Englishmen to pretend to be something other than what they were.

In 1573, Nashe’s father was granted the living in West Harling, Norfolk, where young Thomas probably spent his early years. Nothing is known of Nashe’s basic education except that it was sufficient to allow him to enter St. John’s College, Cambridge, in October, 1582. In March, 1586, he received his bachelor of arts degree and enrolled immediately to work toward the master of arts degree. In 1588, however, he left Cambridge without the degree. Perhaps financial difficulties forced him to leave the university, for his father had died the year before, in 1587. Without financial support from home, Nashe most likely would not have been able to continue his education; probably his college, dominated as it was by Puritans, would not look with favor in the form of financial assistance on the satirical young Nashe, who supported the pursuit of humanistic studies over the more narrow Puritan theology then in vogue at Cambridge.

Whatever his reasons for leaving Cambridge, Nashe certainly did not have the economic means to remain idle long. He followed the lead of two other Cambridge graduates who, armed with no wealth but their wits, turned to literature as a means of earning a livelihood. Both Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe had gone to London to write, and both had found moderate success. Nashe may have been acquainted with both men at Cambridge, but he certainly knew them both in London. Like Nashe, both loved poetry and detested Puritans. In the same year that he left Cambridge, Nashe published The Anatomie of Absurditie, a work of inexperience and brashness.

A young writer of pamphlets in London had few opportunities to earn a living by his work. He was generally paid a flat amount for his manuscript, usually two pounds. If a pamphlet were well-received by the public, the patron to whom it was dedicated might be so flattered that he or she might feel disposed to grant the author a stipend to continue his work. Nashe’s The Anatomie of Absurditie, dedicated to Sir Charles Blount, was, however, of so little literary merit that Nashe probably received no more than his original author’s fee.

Nashe dedicated no more works to Sir Charles; but because he did need patrons, he dedicated later works to a variety of people in a position to offer him assistance. Finally, after the dedication of The Unfortunate Traveller to Henry Wriothesley, the earl of Southampton, Nashe decided that patrons were more trouble than they were worth. Hating hypocrisy in others and finding himself forced into hypocrisy in order to be paid for his work, Nashe turned to writing only for his readers and depended on them to reward his efforts.

Perhaps what gave Nashe his biggest literary boost was the famous Martin Marprelate controversy. Nashe’s part in the verbal battle was limited to the pamphlet An Almond for a Parrat, but the style and the vigorous prose of Martin could not help influencing Nashe. Although he was hostile to Martin’s Puritanical ideas, Nashe must nevertheless have learned much from the formidable prose of his Puritan adversary, for he attacks Martin with the same devices and force of language that the Puritan propagandist used.

Nashe’s entry into the Martin Marprelate controversy brought with it rewards beyond what he might have hoped. Gabriel Harvey wrote disparagingly of Nashe’s part in the controversy, thus starting a new fight: the Nashe-Harvey controversy. It was in this battle of wits that Nashe found his place as a writer. Here the verbal street-fighter had the great good fortune to be attacked by a man of reputation who was inferior in wit and writing ability to Nashe. Harvey’s reputation never recovered from Nashe’s fierce invective. Beginning with a slap at Harvey in his preface to Greene’s A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592) and ending with Have with You to Saffron-Walden, Nashe earned a good reputation and a fair living from his anti-Harvey prose.

All his previous writings were practice for The Unfortunate Traveller, published in 1594. A kind of pamphlet itself, but longer and more complex, the work was not particularly popular during his lifetime, but today it is his best-known work.

Nashe was hounded from London in 1597 when the authorities decided that The Isle of Dogs, a play he had begun, and which Ben Jonson had finished, was “seditious.” Jonson was jailed and Nashe sought, but the famous pamphleteer had fled to Yarmouth, in Norfolk. By 1598, he was back in London, where Nashe’s Lenten Stuffe was entered in the Stationers’ Register.

After Nashe’s Lenten Stuffe, Nashe wrote no more, and in 1601, history records a reference to his death.