Greene in Have With You to Saffron Walden (iii. 132), as 'subscribing to mee in anything but plotting Plaies, wherein he was his crafts master'. Unless Dido is early work, no play written by Nashe before Greene's death on 3 Sept. 1592 is known to us. But he is pretty clearly the 'young Iuuenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastly with mee together writ a Comedie' of Greene's posthumous Groats-worth (cf. App. C, No. xlviii), and the tone of his own Defence of Plays in Pierce Penilesse of 1592 (cf. App. C, No. xlvi) as compared with that of the Menaphon epistle suggests that he had made his peace with the 'taffata fooles'. His one extant unaided play belongs to the autumn of 1592, and was apparently for a private performance at Croydon. Internal evidence enables us to date in Aug.-Oct. 1596, and to ascribe to Nashe, in spite of the fact that his name at the foot is in a nineteenth-century writing, a letter to William Cotton (McKerrow, v. 192, from Cott. MS. Julius C. iii, f. 280) which shows that he was still writing for the stage and gives valuable evidence upon the theatrical crisis of that year (App. D, No. cv). To 1597 belongs the misadventure of The Isle of Dogs, which sent Nashe in flight to Great Yarmouth, and probably ended his dramatic career. He is mentioned as dead in C. Fitzgeffrey, Affaniae (1601).
Collections 1883-5. A. B. Grosart, The Complete Works of T. N. 6 vols. (Huth Library). 1904-10. R. B. McKerrow, The Works of T. N. 5 vols.
PLAYS Summer's Last Will and Testament. 1592
S. R. 1600, Oct. 28 (Harsnett). 'A booke called Sommers last Will and testament presented by William Sommers.' Burby and Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 175).
1600. A Pleasant Comedie, called Summers last will and Testament. Written by Thomas Nash. Simon Stafford for Walter Burre. [Induction, with Prologue and Epilogue.]
Edition in Dodsley^{3-4} (1825-74).—Dissertations: B. Nicholson, The Date of S. L. W. and T. (Athenaeum, 10 Jan. 1891); F. G. Fleay Queen Elizabeth, Croydon and the Drama (1898).
The play was intended for performance on the 'tyle-stones' and in the presence of a 'Lord', to whom there are several other references, in one of which he is 'your Grace' (ll. 17, 205, 208, 587, 795, 1897, 1925). There are also local references to 'betweene this and Stretham' (l. 202), to 'Dubbers hill' near Croydon (l. 621), to Croydon itself (ll. 1830, 1873), and to 'forlorne' Lambeth (l. 1879). The conclusion seems justified that 'this lowe built house' (l. 1884) was the palace of Archbishop Whitgift at Croydon.
There was a plague 'in this latter end of summer' (l. 80); which had been 'brought in' by the dog-days (l. 656), and had led to 'want of terme' and consequent 'Cities harm' in London (l. 1881). Summer
