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287NASHE, THOMAS (1561–ca. 1601) Thomas
Nashe was born in Lowestoft in 1561. He attended St.
John’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1586 with a
B.A. Primarily known as a satirist and a playwright,
Nashe was part of the “University Wits” group that
included men such as CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE and
Thomas Kyd. He is especially remembered for a series
of public (and vicious) debates with the poet Gabriel
Harvey and his brother Richard that are reminiscent of
the medieval FLYTING tradition and of the literary
debates between Thomas Churchyard and Thomas
Camel in the late 1500s. Nashe’s best-known work is
The Life of Jack Wilton (1594), considered by some to be
the fi rst picaresque novel in English. Nashe, like most
of the University Wits, also dabbled in poetry. Many of
these poems were incorporated into other works. For
instance, “A LITANY IN TIME OF PLAGUE” was published as
part of the play Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Nashe
died in 1600 or 1601, of unknown causes.
See also “LITANY IN TIME OF PLAGUE, A.”
FURTHER READING
Hibbard, G. R. Thomas Nashe: A Critical Introduction. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.
McGinn, Donald J. Thomas Nashe. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Nashe, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Nashe. 5 vols. Edited
by R. B. McKerrow. London, 1904, 1910.
“NATURE THAT WASHED HER HANDS
IN MILK” SIR WALTER RALEIGH (1590) This
poem is a combination of a BLAZON—a systematic list-
ing of a beloved’s physical charms—and a COMPLAINT
about the shortness of life and the inevitability of time’s
decay and death. Each STANZA in the fi rst half sets out
some miraculous beauty created by Nature, only to
fi nd it destroyed by Time. The “mistress” that Nature
creates from pure and dazzling ingredients such as
snow, silk, and milk (instead of earth and water) is
beautiful but fragile: While she presents herself in “her
inside,” to her lover as having “wantonness and wit” (l.
12), he complains that on her outside, she is unrespon-
sive to him. In a typically Petrarchan approach, the
speaker contrasts her seductive presentation of self with
her coldness in their relations. The tone of the poem
then changes as the speaker ruthlessly points out the
lesson of human beauty—that it decays and is destroyed
by Time, which “dims, discolors, and destroys” the
beauty of Nature’s creation. Her outside beauty decays;
her sexual energy, conveyed in metaphors of liquidity
and liveliness, will be “dull”ed and “dried” up (ll. 29–
30). And like beauty and sexual desire, human life
itself, “the story of our days” (l. 36) is destroyed. Like
everything else in Nature, we die, unknown and alone.
The poem’s grim message is appropriately conveyed
in relentlessly plain verse. Direct, almost proverbial,
sayings replace Petrarchan metaphor: Slow lines of
single syllable words force a sense of solemnity upon a
reader, culminating in the emotional appeal at the con-
clusion as the speaker looks around hopelessly for an
answer that neither Nature nor Time, which overcomes
all things, can provide him: “Oh, cruel Time! which