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2 unusual facts about Thomas Nashe


Harvest festival

A play by Thomas Nashe, Summer's Last Will and Testament, (first published in London in 1600 but believed from internal evidence to have been first performed in October 1592 at Croydon) contains a scene which demonstrates several of these features.

Thomas Nashe

The anti-Martinist An Almond for a Parrot (1590), ostensibly credited to one "Cutbert Curry-knave," is now universally recognised as Nashe's work, although its author humorously claims, in its dedication to the comedian William Kempe, to have met Harlequin in Bergamo while returning from a trip to Venice in the summer of 1589.


Constant Lambert

His major choral work Summer's Last Will and Testament (after the play of the same name by Thomas Nashe), one of his most emotionally dark works, proved unfashionable in the mood following the death of King George V, but Alan Frank hailed it at the time as Lambert's "finest work".

Quintus Roscius Gallus

When Thomas Nashe wanted to praise Edward Alleyn as the best actor of his generation, he called Alleyn a Roscius (Pierce Penniless, 1592); John Downes titled his history of Restoration drama Roscius Anglicanus (1708).


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