PLAYS, VOL. VIII (4TH EDITION)***


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A SELECT COLLECTION OF OLD ENGLISH PLAYS, VOL. VIII

Fourth Edition

Originally published by Robert Dodsley in the Year 1744.

Now first chronologically arranged, revised and enlarged with the Notes
of all the Commentators, and new Notes

By

W. CAREW HAZLITT

1874-1876.







CONTENTS:

Summer's Last Will and Testament
The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington
The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington
Contention between Liberality and Prodigality
Grim the Collier of Croydon.






SUMMER'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.




EDITION.


_A pleasant Comedie, called Summer's last will and Testament. Written
by Thomas Nash. Imprinted at London by Simon Stafford, for Water Burre_.
1600. 4to.




[COLLIER'S PREFACE.]


[Thomas Nash, son of William Nash, minister, and Margaret his wife, was
baptized at Lowestoft, in Suffolk, in November 1567.[1] He was admitted
a scholar at St John's College, Cambridge, on the Lady Margaret's
foundation, in 1584, and proceeded B.A. in 1585:] the following is a
copy of the Register:--

"Tho. Nashe Coll. Joh. Cantab. A.B. ib. 1585." The place, though not
the time, of his birth[2] we have under his own authority, for in his
"Lenten Stuff," printed in 1599, he informs us that he was born at
Lowestoft; and he leads us to conclude that his family was of some note,
by adding that his "father sprang from the Nashes of Herefordshire."[3]

It does not appear that Nash ever proceeded Master of Arts at Cambridge,
and most of his biographers agree that he left his college about 1587.
It is evident, however, that he had got into disgrace, and probably was
expelled; for the author of "England to her three Daughters" in
"Polimanteia," 1595, speaking of Harvey and Nash, and the pending
quarrel between them, uses these terms: "Cambridge make thy two children
friends: _thou hast been unkind to the one to wean him before his time_,
and too fond upon the other to keep him so long without preferment: the
one is ancient and of much reading; the other is young, but full of
wit."[4] The cause of his disgrace is reported to have been the share he
took in a piece called "Terminus et non Terminus," not now extant; and
it is not denied that his partner in this offence was expelled. Most
likely, therefore, Nash suffered the same punishment.

If Nash be the author of "An Almond for a Parrot," of which there is
little doubt, although his name is not affixed to it, he travelled in
Italy;[5] and we find from another of his pieces that he had been in
Ireland. Perhaps he went abroad soon after he abandoned Cambridge, and
before he settled in London and became an author. His first appearance
in this character seems to have been in 1589, and we believe the
earliest date of any tract attributed to him relating to Martin
Marprelate is also 1589.[6] He was the first, as has been frequently
remarked, to attack this enemy of the Church with the keen missiles of
wit and satire, throwing aside the lumbering and unserviceable weapons
of scholastic controversy. Having set the example in this respect, he
had many followers and imitators, and among them John Lily, the dramatic
poet, the author of "Pap with a Hatchet."

In London Nash became acquainted with Robert Greene, and their
friendship drew him into a long literary contest with Gabriel Harvey, to
which Nash owes much of his reputation. It arose out of the posthumous
attack of Harvey upon Robert Greene, of which sufficient mention has
been made elsewhere. Nash replied on behalf of his dead companion, and
reiterated the charge which had given the original offence to Harvey,
viz., that his brother was the son of a ropemaker.[7] One piece was
humorously dedicated to Richard Litchfield, a barber of Cambridge, and
Harvey answered it under the assumed character of the same barber, in a
tract called "The Trimmino of Thomas Nash,"[8] which also contained a
woodcut of a man in fetters. This representation referred to the
imprisonment of Nash for an offence he gave by writing a play (not now
extant) called "The Isle of Dogs," and to this event Francis Meres
alludes in his "Palladia Tamia," 1598, in these terms: "As Actaeon was
worried of his own hounds, so is Tom Nash of his 'Isle of Dogs.' Dogs
were the death of Euripides; but be not disconsolate, gallant young
Juvenal; Linus, the son of Apollo, died the same death. Yet God forbid,
that so brave a wit should so basely perish!--Thine are but paper dogs;
neither is thy banishment like Ovid's eternally to converse with the
barbarous _Getes_. Therefore comfort thyself, sweet Tom, with Cicero's
glorious return to Rome, and with the council Aeneas gives to his
sea-beaten soldiers." Lib. I. Aeneid.

    "Pluck up thine heart, and drive from thence both fear and care away:
    To think on this may pleasure be, perhaps, another day."

    --_Durato, et temet rebus servato secundis_. (fol. 286.)

This was in part verified in the next year, for when Nash published his
"Lenten Stuff," he referred with apparent satisfaction to his past
troubles in consequence of