SOURCE: Schwyzer, Philip. “Summer Fruit and Autumn Leaves: Thomas Nashe in 1593.” English Literary Renaissance 24, no. 3 (autumn 1994): 583-619.

In this essay, Schwyzer surveys the circumstances surrounding the composition and the publication history of The Unfortunate Traveller and Christs Tears over Jerusalem to explain how the two works could be the product of the same time in Nashe's career. The critic characterizes Nashe as an innovator whose deep belief in orthodoxy and the status quo gave him the freedom to experiment without fear of upsetting the order he believed was firmly entrenched.

Thomas Nashe's dedication of The Unfortunate Traveller to the Earl of Southampton closes with a bit of conventional play on the word “leaves”: “Your Lordship is the large spreading branch of renown, from whence these my idle leaues seeke to deriue their whole nourishing: it resteth you either scornfully shake them off, as worm-eaten & worthles, or in pity...