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A Cup of News: The Life of Thomas Nashe
NICHOLL, T,: A CUP OF NEWS, THE LIFE OF THOMAS NASHE, LONDON, 1984, xiii 352 p, laminas,Encuadernacion original, Nuevo,
- GenresNonfictionHistory
342 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Charles Nicholl
28 books69 followersCharles Nicholl is an English author specializing in works of history, biography, literary detection, and travel. His subjects have included Christopher Marlowe, Arthur Rimbaud, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Nashe and William Shakespeare. Besides his literary output, Nicholl has also presented documentary programs on television. In 1974 he was the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer Award for his account of an LSD trip entitled 'The Ups and The Downs'.
Nicholl was educated at King's College, Cambridge, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has lectured in Britain, Italy and the United States. He lives in Lucchesia in Italy with his wife and children. He also lectures on Martin Randall Travel tours.
Nicholl was educated at King's College, Cambridge, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has lectured in Britain, Italy and the United States. He lives in Lucchesia in Italy with his wife and children. He also lectures on Martin Randall Travel tours.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 2, 2024
I knew very little about Nashe when I began this biography by Charles Nicholl. I knew that Nashe was a celebrated pamphleteer in Elizabethan London, that he knew pretty much everyone in literary circles, that he engaged in scathing battles with Puritans and a pompous scholar named Harvey. I knew that he was the coauthor along with Ben Jonson of the notorious banned and lost play Isle of Dogs. I knew that Shakespeare caricatured Nashe and Harvey in Loves Labors Lost as Moth and Armado, respectively.
Nicholl fleshes this out until I thought I knew Nashe, his pettiness, his brilliance, his compromises, and his failures. Often Nashe's writing is so immersed in the minutiae of ongoing Elizabethan feuds and power struggles, that without Nicholl's assistance, I would never have been able to completely understand what Nashe was getting at. Because Nashe was writing in a vicious police state, his attacks and criticisms of the wealthy and powerful are couched in what the Russian dissidents used to call Aesopian language. His readers got the references, but he could claim plausible deniability, until Isle of Dogs, when he had to flee London, lest he be imprisoned like Jonson.
All of the Elizabethan’s did the same thing, as Nicholl explains in the amusing story of Shakespeare’s attack on the hated Chancellor, William Brooke, Lord Cobham, through the buffoonish character of Sir John Oldcastle. One of Lord Cobham’s ancestors, named Oldcastle, was long ago hung and burned as a traitor and heretic. When Lord Cobham complained to the Queen about the attack by Shakespeare, she made the Bard change the name of the character. Shakespeare changed it to Falstaff. Nicholl explains that “Falstaff” implied a detumescent appendage; in other words, Shakespeare changed the name to “limp dick.” Nashe also attacked Cobham by referring to red herrings roasting on a grill. “Cob” is another name for a kipper, Cobham's ancestor had been roasted. Same thinly concealed attack.
The one small downside I had with the Nicholl book was that he put all the extensive quotations from Nashe’s works in the original spellings. Modernized spelling and punctuation would’ve made things considerably less confusing without losing the flavor of Nashe’s linguistic flourishes.
If you are interested in the Elizabethan literary milieu, I highly recommend Nicholl’s A Cup of News.
Nicholl fleshes this out until I thought I knew Nashe, his pettiness, his brilliance, his compromises, and his failures. Often Nashe's writing is so immersed in the minutiae of ongoing Elizabethan feuds and power struggles, that without Nicholl's assistance, I would never have been able to completely understand what Nashe was getting at. Because Nashe was writing in a vicious police state, his attacks and criticisms of the wealthy and powerful are couched in what the Russian dissidents used to call Aesopian language. His readers got the references, but he could claim plausible deniability, until Isle of Dogs, when he had to flee London, lest he be imprisoned like Jonson.
All of the Elizabethan’s did the same thing, as Nicholl explains in the amusing story of Shakespeare’s attack on the hated Chancellor, William Brooke, Lord Cobham, through the buffoonish character of Sir John Oldcastle. One of Lord Cobham’s ancestors, named Oldcastle, was long ago hung and burned as a traitor and heretic. When Lord Cobham complained to the Queen about the attack by Shakespeare, she made the Bard change the name of the character. Shakespeare changed it to Falstaff. Nicholl explains that “Falstaff” implied a detumescent appendage; in other words, Shakespeare changed the name to “limp dick.” Nashe also attacked Cobham by referring to red herrings roasting on a grill. “Cob” is another name for a kipper, Cobham's ancestor had been roasted. Same thinly concealed attack.
The one small downside I had with the Nicholl book was that he put all the extensive quotations from Nashe’s works in the original spellings. Modernized spelling and punctuation would’ve made things considerably less confusing without losing the flavor of Nashe’s linguistic flourishes.
If you are interested in the Elizabethan literary milieu, I highly recommend Nicholl’s A Cup of News.
June 25, 2016
Thomas Nashe was one of the sixteenth century 'university wits', a friend of Christopher Marlowe and, possibly, John Donne. Here Nicholl, who brought Marlowe himself to life in The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, doesn't quite manage the same alchemy for Nashe but it has to be admitted that he would have had a hard job given the lack of sources.
Nicholl does a good job of reconstructing the literary world in which Nashe lived: the pamphlet writers and proto-journalists rather than the playwrights like Shakespeare or the 'high' literary writers like Philip Sidney or Spenser. Unfortunately, where he falls down is in actually telling us anything about Nashe himself and he takes refuge in reading Nashe's variety of works as if they were autobiography. Apart from the fact that Nashe is an incredibly various writer, from the religious Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem to the bawdy (and quasi-pornographic) The Choice of Valentines, taking texts as barely hidden 'real life' is akin to assuming the lyrics of pop songs are autobiography.
So this is undoubtedly a good read for anyone interested in Renaissance literary culture or Nashe himself but all it amounts to, in the end, is guesswork, speculation and some very naive readings of texts. Worth reading but it has to all be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
Nicholl does a good job of reconstructing the literary world in which Nashe lived: the pamphlet writers and proto-journalists rather than the playwrights like Shakespeare or the 'high' literary writers like Philip Sidney or Spenser. Unfortunately, where he falls down is in actually telling us anything about Nashe himself and he takes refuge in reading Nashe's variety of works as if they were autobiography. Apart from the fact that Nashe is an incredibly various writer, from the religious Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem to the bawdy (and quasi-pornographic) The Choice of Valentines, taking texts as barely hidden 'real life' is akin to assuming the lyrics of pop songs are autobiography.
So this is undoubtedly a good read for anyone interested in Renaissance literary culture or Nashe himself but all it amounts to, in the end, is guesswork, speculation and some very naive readings of texts. Worth reading but it has to all be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
February 7, 2025
About as good as it could be. That the few details of Nashe's life available could be expanded into a full-length biography is quite a feat, and the result is a fairly informal but not overly-speculative picture of the the Elizabethan world, including portraits of Marlowe, Greene, Kyd and of course that "upstart crowe".
Nashe's prose reached the limits of the language. He's been called "vicious" in his sensibilities, especially in The Unfortunate Traveler, and it's true that his lost play got him in big trouble, but I feel like that if he saw an opening he would go for it. He was mining for new expression and what made it to his pages was often seemingly savage. His London was a savage world. The plague was in full swing, the streets were filthy, and his own profession was a disreputable one, with his peers being drunks, blasphemers, outright criminals. I am still unable to get my head around much of his later prose in Have With You To Saffron Elder or Lenten Stuff. For me those moments are heights of language, but I understand that many readers will find much of Nashe to be dated or barely comprehensible. If you're fascinated by the Elizabethans I do think he is not one to be left unexplored.
Nashe's prose reached the limits of the language. He's been called "vicious" in his sensibilities, especially in The Unfortunate Traveler, and it's true that his lost play got him in big trouble, but I feel like that if he saw an opening he would go for it. He was mining for new expression and what made it to his pages was often seemingly savage. His London was a savage world. The plague was in full swing, the streets were filthy, and his own profession was a disreputable one, with his peers being drunks, blasphemers, outright criminals. I am still unable to get my head around much of his later prose in Have With You To Saffron Elder or Lenten Stuff. For me those moments are heights of language, but I understand that many readers will find much of Nashe to be dated or barely comprehensible. If you're fascinated by the Elizabethans I do think he is not one to be left unexplored.
February 21, 2023
Nicholl, as always, is a №1 fan of his biography hero, his work is scrupulous and not without humour. He created his Nashe from bits and pieces, heavily relying on his source materials. His Nashe has a plot to live and emotions to feel. It is very much a fiction story, heavily based on real documents.
Often, Nicholl tells the story in the footnotes, because it's drifting away from the main plot of the chapter, but still interesting enough for not being left untold.
Often, Nicholl tells the story in the footnotes, because it's drifting away from the main plot of the chapter, but still interesting enough for not being left untold.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews