Poem 2 From Pierce Penilesse
Perusing
yesternight
with
idle
eyes,
The
Fairy
Singers
stately
tuned
verse:
And
viewing
after
Chap-mens
wonted
guise,
What
strange
contents
the
title
did
rehearse.
I
streight
leapt
ouer
to
the
latter
end,
Where
like
the
queint
Comædians
of
our
time,
That
when
their
Play
is
doone
do
fal
to
ryme,
I
found
short
lines,
to
sundry
Nobles
pend.
Whom
he
as
speciall
Mirrours
singled
fourth,
To
be
the
Patrons
of
his
Poetry;
I
read
them
all,
and
reuerenc't
their
worth,
Yet
wondred
he
left
out
thy
memory.
But
therefore
gest
I
he
supprest
thy
name,
Because
few
words
might
not
co[m]prise
thy
fame.
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe, (born 1567, Lowestoft, Suffolk, Eng.—died c. 1601, Yarmouth, Norfolk?), pamphleteer, poet, dramatist, and author of The Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jacke Wilton (1594), the first picaresque novel in English. Nashe was educated at the University of Cambridge, and about 1588 he went to London, where he became associated with Robert Greene and other professional writers. In 1589 he wrote The Anatomie of Absurditie and the preface to Greene’s Menaphon. Both works are bold, opinionated surveys of the contemporary state of writing; occasionally obscure, they are euphuistic in style and range freely over a great variety of topics.