Thomas Nashe Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ronald B. McKerrow

Critical Essay by Ronald B. McKerrow

SOURCE: McKerrow, Ronald B. Introduction to The Works of Thomas Nashe, Vol. I, pp. 110-36. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1904.

In this excerpt, McKerrow surveys the classical and contemporary works that most influenced Nashe's writing, particularly those of Pietro Aretino and François Rabelais. The critic argues that Nashe's borrowings often do not reflect a significant debt to earlier authors, suggesting that the author read widely but not deeply.

One of the most interesting, and at the same time most difficult, branches of the biography of a man of letters, is that which investigates the books with which he was familiar and which influenced him in his own work. To do this satisfactorily in the case of an author like Nashe, whose reading seems to have been both discursive and peculiar, would need an acquaintance with the literature of the sixteenth century, both English and foreign, such as very few possess,...
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