SOURCE: Nicholl, Charles. “The Pamphleteer.” In A Cup of News: The Life of Thomas Nashe, pp. 1-11. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

In the following essay, Nicholl characterizes the career of Thomas Nashe as that of a tabloid journalist: topical, sensational, and highly temporal. The critic suggests that Nashe's forays into urban grittiness were not attempts to highlight or change social problems, but rather opportunities for laughter and immediate experience.

Thomas Nashe came in on the crest of the last great Elizabethan wave. He arrived in London in 1588, an ambitious young wit fresh from Cambridge. His first major success as an author was with Pierce Penilesse, published in 1592. Further successes followed. He was prolific and controversial, the pamphleteer who precisely caught the time's flavour. He reigned pre-eminent among ‘the riffe-raffe of the scribling rascality’.¹ But his bent for topical satire and lampoon also earned him trouble—‘let me but...