View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive Thomas Nashe and the Idea of the Author CHETA, Arun Kumar Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/25583/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version CHETA, Arun Kumar (2019). Thomas Nashe and the Idea of the Author. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk Thomas Nashe and the Idea of the Author Arun Kumar Cheta A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2019 1 Candidate Declaration I hereby declare that: 1. I have not been enrolled for another award of the University, or other academic or professional organisation, whilst undertaking my research degree. 2. None of the material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award. 3. I am aware of and understand the University's policy on plagiarism and certify that this thesis is my own work. The use of all published or other sources of material consulted have been properly and fully acknowledged. 4. The work undertaken towards the thesis has been conducted in accordance with the SHU Principles of Integrity in Research and the SHU Research Ethics Policy. 5. The word count of the thesis is 88,000. Name Arun Kumar Cheta Date August 2019 Award PhD Faculty Development and Society Director(s) of Studies Professor Lisa Hopkins 2 Abstract Thomas Nashe was a writer whose authorial voice was impacted by a number of different sources. Beginning with figures writing in the classical age, this thesis discusses how Nashe directly engages with their authorial personae by representing them directly in his works, and examines how Nashe presented his views on authorship by examining the manner in which he utilised these authors and their works. The thesis is not limited by genre, but engages with authors across various styles, including satire, history and drama whilst also discussing how Nashe rationalised his admiration of authors whose religious views were antithetical to his own. The scope of the analysis ranges from considering Nashe’s responses to classical authors (like Apuleius and Lucian) to contemporary Europe (Aretino) and England (including Marlowe and Greene). This thesis offers an original contribution to knowledge by highlighting how Nashe’s self-fashioning of his own authorial persona is developed through his interrogation of the models of authorship offered by both classical and contemporary authorities and discussing how his utilisation of these figures assisted in his growth as a polyauthor. The thesis concludes that Nashe’s authorial voice and identity developed through exposure to various influences and was constantly evolving throughout his career. 3 Table of Contents Introduction Page 5 Chapter One - Golden Asses and True Page 33 Histories; Apuleius and Lucian. Chapter Two - 'True English Aretine'; Nashe Page 64 and Aretino. Chapter Three - The Fraternitie of Fools: Page 100 Nashe and the Harvey Circle. Chapter Four - The Reluctant Playwright: Page 200 Nashe and Contemporary Drama. Chapter Five - 'A diviner muse than him'; Page 288 the dialogue between Nashe and Marlowe. Chapter Six - Sworn Brothers or Occasional Page 325 Drinkers: Nashe and Greene. Conclusion Page 369 Works Cited Page i 4 Introduction Nashe may be said to have made the 1590s his own. In literary circles he was hic et ubique as friend, foe, gossip or critic, a darting figure at the thick of the fray. He was the intimate friend of Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene; he was the co-author of Ben Jonson’s first venture as a playwright (the scandalous Isle of Dogs); his day-to- day colleagues were writers like John Lyly, Thomas Watson, Harry Chettle, the comedians Tarlton and Kemp, the disreputable printer John Danter, the ‘king of the tobacconists’ Humfrey King.1 Nashe can be proved to have been acquainted with a fair number of more or less well-known works, and the date at which he read some of them can be approximately determined. No doubt these were but a small part of the literature with which he was familiar, and possibly not one of them was among the books which had the deepest influence upon him, but still they interested him sufficiently for him to make use of them in his own writings, and they are therefore worth our attention.2 Paradoxically, though Nashe’s pamphlets are commercial literature, they come very close to being, in another way, ‘pure’ literature: 1 Charles Nicholl, Introduction to A Cup of News: The Life of Thomas Nashe (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984) p. 1 2 R. B. McKerrow, Introduction to The Works of Thomas Nashe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958) Vol. 5, p. 110. All quotations from Nashe’s works are taken from this publication unless otherwise noted. 5 literature which is, as nearly as possible, without a subject. In a certain sense of the verb ‘say’, if asked what Nashe ‘says’ we should have to reply, Nothing. He tells no story, expresses no thought, maintains no attitude. Even his angers seem to be part of his technique rather than real passions.3 Thomas Nashe is one of the more interesting authors active in the latter part of the sixteenth century and remains one of the most difficult to analyse. It is easy to describe him as an author more concerned with the style of his writing than the substance of his words. As Lewis also notes Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) is undoubtedly the greatest of Elizabethan pamphleteers, the perfect literary showman, the juggler with words who can keep a crowd spell-bound by sheer virtuosity. The subject, in his sort of writing, in unimportant.4 This thesis will pick up the challenge presented by Lewis’ words and show that the opposite is true; in his ten years of activity and twelve extant works Thomas Nashe managed to say a great deal; in many cases more than many of his far better- known peers. I will be exploring the works of Nashe and how the idea of the author is represented in his works and show how Nashe represents those who have had impact on his own craft; I will be examining these writers and discussing how he represents and utilises them to enhance and develop his own work. Nashe showed 3 CS Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) this ref. p.416 4 CS Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, this ref. p.411 6 himself to be a person whose identity and worth was defined by his position as a writer and this thesis will show the ongoing effect of these other writers going back to the classical world and concluding by discussing those authors who were contemporaneous with him. In practice this means that I will be looking at the major writers who feature in Nashe’s work and what these choices suggest about his writing career and his ambitions. As Nashe encounters and uses authors from a variety of genres I will also discuss Nashe’s position in these different fields; I will discuss his pamphleteering, his other prose writing, as well as engaging with his less considered career as a playwright. In doing so I will establish how Nashe represents and relates to other authors in his own works and how his knowledge and experience with them has informed his own writing. In doing so I am taking the opposite position as that delivered by Barthes in The Death of the Author; he notes the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now.5 I shall present a contradictory viewpoint in this thesis; that Nashe’s experiences with both his predecessors and his peers have impacted on his own work and show 5 Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, translated by Richard Howard, UbuWeb | UbuWeb Papers, http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf 7 how this exposure developed Nashe as an author over the course of his career and helped Nashe enhance his own authorial voice. To do this it is useful to discuss how self-fashioning and authorship have been previously considered by modern scholars. Stephen Greenblatt, for example, discusses six Tudor-era authors (More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare) and examines how these authors’ works changed in accordance with the dominant social codes. As he notes Self-fashioning for such figures involves submission to am absolute power or authority situated at least partially outside the self – God, a sacred book, an institution such as church, court, colonial or military administration. Marlowe is an exception, but his consuming hostility to hierarchical authority has…some of the force of submission.6 In similar fashion Laurie Ellinghausen looks at a number of authors, Nashe included, and discusses how they represent themselves in their works and how these authors helped define the concept of professional authorship. She notes how Nashe represents ‘the intriguing paradox of a Cambridge graduate…deciding to style himself as a “day labourer” in his writing activities’7 and how his ‘university training nurtured a hope for preferment that would never be fulfilled’8 presenting 6 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005) this ref.