For Nashe, however, prose is the enduring topic; he was obsessed with its powers, its spontaneity, and its reception. The prose writer took pride in his favorite "extemporal" vein, with its huge words, its scattershot metaphors, and its parody of styles. Indeed, while his prose has a penchant for invective and an aversion to set patterns, Nashe loved to try on formal styles for a paragraph or two, though he often balked at any charge that his work was derivative. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that Nashe was interested in prose apart from the world in which he lived. His life was as strange and explosive as his prose, and he was forever trying to decide just how the two--prose and life--relate.
The legends and myths surrounding Nashe's life have filled more volumes than the scant number of facts known about him. He was born in November 1567 in the coastal town of Lowestoft, the son of a minister and his second wife. His family moved to nearby West Harling in 1573, where the boy received his earliest education, probably at home.
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