Thomas Nashe and Literary Performance

As an instigator of debate and a defender of tradition, a man of letters and a popular hack, a writer of erotica and a spokesman for bishops, an urbane metropolitan and a celebrant of local custom, the various textual performances of Thomas Nashe have elicited, and continue to provoke, a range of contradictory reactions. Nashe’s often incongruous authorial characteristics suggest that, as a ‘King of Pages’, he not only courted controversy but also deliberately cultivated a variety of public personae, acquiring a reputation more slippery than the herrings he celebrated in print. Collectively, the essays in this book illustrate how Nashe excelled at textual performance but his personae became a contested site as readers actively participated and engaged in the reception of Nashe’s public image and his works.