SOURCE: Williams, Nancy. “The Eight Parts of a Theme in ‘Gascoigne's Memories: III.’” Studies in Philology 83, no. 2 (spring 1986): 117-37.

In the following essay, Williams illuminates the themes of the poem “Gascoigne's Memories: III.”

In 1565 George Gascoigne, deeply in debt and searching for a way out, decided to “abandon all vaine delightes and to returne unto Greyes Inne, there to undertake againe the studdie of the common Lawes.” To celebrate the occasion of his return to the Inns of Court, five of his friends challenged him to write “in verse somewhat worthye to bee remembred, before he entered into their fellowshippe … five sundrye theames, whiche they delivered unto him.” Their challenge to his versatility must have pleased him, because he boasted that in meeting its terms, he “devised” one hundred and fifty-eight lines of verse in his head during a three-day journey on horseback. Since he committed none of...