SOURCE: Holbrook, Peter. “‘Playing the Knave’: Social Symbolism and Interplay in Thomas Nashe—Pierce Penilesse.” In Literature and Degree in Renaissance England: Nashe, Bourgeois Tragedy, Shakespeare, pp. 27-85. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994.

In this excerpt, Holbrook discusses how Nashe navigated high and low social and rhetorical positions in Pierce Penilesse. The critic argues that although Nashe was adept at using low and popular voices in his writing, his social viewpoint does not generally reflect a truly populist position.

Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell explicitly foregrounds outsiderness:

Having spent many yeeres in studying how to live, and liv'de a long time without mony: having tired my youth with follie, and surfetted my minde with vanitie, I began to length to looke backe to repentaunce, & addresse my endevors to prosperitie: But all in vaine, I sate up late, and rose earely, contended with the colde, and conversed...