Ogden Nash - Salem Press

Critical Survey of Poetry Nashe, Thomas
mous 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.
Analysis
Thomas Nashe the satirical pamphleteer, who was
wont to use language as a cudgel in a broad prose style,
seldom disciplined himself to the more delicate work of
writing poetry. Both his temperament and his pocketbook
directed him to the freer and more profitable form
of pamphlet prose. It is this prose that made his reputation,
but Nashe did write poems, mostly lyrical in the
manner of his time. No originator in poetic style, Nashe
followed the lead of such worthy predecessors as Geoffrey
Chaucer, the earl of Surrey, Edmund Spenser, and
Christopher Marlowe.
Nashe’s interest in poetry was not slight. In typical
Renaissance fashion, he believed poetry to be the highest
form of moral philosophy. Following Sidney, he insisted
that the best poetry is based upon scholarship and
devotion to detail. Not only does poetry, in his perception,
encourage virtue and discourage vice, but also it
“cleanses” the language of barbarisms and makes the
“vulgar sort” in London adopt a more pleasing manner
of speech. Because he loved good poetry and saw the
moral and aesthetic value of it, Nashe condemned the
“balladmongers,” who abused the ears and sensitivities
of the gentlefolk of England. To him, the ballad writers
were “common pamfletters” whose lack of learning and
lust for money were responsible for littering the streets
with the garbage of their ballads—a strange reaction for
a man who was himself a notable writer of pamphlets.
For the learned poetry of Western culture, Nashe had the
highest appreciation.
Nashe’s own poetic efforts are often placed in the
context of his prose works, as if he were setting jewels
among the coarser material, as did George Gascoigne,
Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, Thomas Deloney, and
others. Pierce Peniless, “The Four Letters Confuted,”
and The Unfortunate Traveller all have poems sprinkled
here and there. The play Summers Last Will and Testament,
itself written in quite acceptable blank verse, has
several lyrics of some interest scattered throughout.
Nashe’s shorter poetic efforts are almost equally divided
between sonnets and lyrical poems. The longer The
Choise of Valentines is a narrative in the erotic style of
Ovid.
Sonnets
Nashe’s sonnets are six in number, two of which may
be said to be parodies of the form. Each is placed within
a longer work, where its individual purpose is relevant to
the themes of that work. Most of the sonnets are in the
English form, containing three quatrains and a concluding
couplet. Following the lead of the earl of Surrey
(who is, indeed, the putative author of the two sonnets to
Geraldine in The Unfortunate Traveller), Nashe uses a
concluding couplet in each of his sonnets, including “To
the Right Honorable the lord S.,” which in other respects
(as in the division into octave and sestet rhyming
abbaabba, cdcdee) is closer to the Italian form.
In his first sonnet, “Perusing yesternight, with idle
eyes,” Nashe pauses at the end of Pierce Peniless to
praise the lord Amyntas, whom Edmund Spenser had
neglected in The Faerie Queene (1590-1596). In “Perusing
yesternight, with idle eyes,” the famous poem by
Spenser, Nashe had turned to the end of the poem to find
sonnets addressed to “sundry Nobles.” Nashe uses the
three quatrains to rehearse the problem: He read the
poem, found the sonnets addressed to the nobles, and
wondered why Spenser had left out “thy memory.” In an
excellent use of the concluding couplet in this form,
he decides that Spenser must have omitted praise of
Amyntas because “few words could not cfprise thy
fame.”
If “Perusing yesternight, with idle eyes” is in the tradition
of using the sonnet to praise, Nashe’s second sonnet,
“Were there no warres,” is not. Concluding his prose
attack on Gabriel Harvey in “The Four Letters Confuted,”
this sonnet looks forward to John Milton rather
than backward to Petrarch. Here Nashe promises Harvey
constant warfare. Harvey had suggested that he
would like to call off the battle, but in so doing he had
delivered a few verbal blows to Nashe. To the request for
a truce, Nashe responds with a poetic “no!” Again using
the three quatrains to deliver his message, the poet calls
for “Vncessant warres with waspes and droanes,” announces
that revenge is an endless muse, and says that
he will gain his reputation by attacking “this duns.” His
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