Nash, THOMAS, a busy writer in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign, was born at Lowestoft in 1567, studied almost seven years at St John's College, Cambridge, travelled abroad, visiting Italy and Germany, and thereafter plunged recklessly into the life of letters in London, and forced a shifty living from fate until the close. He kept ever a high heart amid manifold troubles, and, satirist as he was, his inexhaustible gaiety and goodness made him the darling of his friends—the 'sweet boy' and 'sweet Tom' of Greene and Francis Meres. He was dead by 1601, as prematurely as Marlowe, Peele, and Greene. Nash had a genuine relish for good literature; he praises warmly Rabelais, Aretino, Spenser, Sidney, and Marlowe. He had also a great faculty for vituperation, and the times were favourable for its exercise. His first writing was his vigorous preface to Greene's Menaphon (1589), and this was quickly followed by the Anatomie of Absurditie (1589), a satirical discussion on social manners; a series of impetuous tractates flung into the Marprelate controversy; Pierce Penilesse, his Supplication to the Divell (1592), full of keen observation and satire, and rich in autobiographical interest; Strange Newes (1593); and Have with you to Saffron Walden (1596), containing a vehement onslaught on Gabriel Harvey; The Terrors of the Night, or a Discourse of Apparitions (1594); Christ's Tears over Jerusalem (1593), a long, edifying discourse; The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton (1594), the best specimen of the picaresque tale in our literature before Defoe; The Isle of Dogs (1597), which was at once suppressed, and is now lost, and for which the author was sent to prison; and Lenten Stuffe (1599), 'in praise of the red herring,' really a humorous description of Yarmouth. The tragedy of Dido was written in collaboration with Marlowe; Summer's Last Will and Testament, by Nash alone.
See the Memorial Introduction in Dr Grosart's Complete Works of Thomas Nashe (6 vols. 4to, Lond. 1883-84); also chap. vi. of Jussierand's work, The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (Eng. trans. by Eliz. Lee, 1890).