benefit until another seven years had elapsed. The 1592 progress came to an end upon 9 Oct. and I should put the performance not
long before. When Q_{1} of Pierce Penilesse (S. R. 8 Aug. 1592) was issued, Nashe was kept by fear of infection 'with my Lord in the Countrey', and the misinterpretations of the pamphlet which he deprecates in the epistle to Q_{2} (McKerrow, i. 154) are hinted at in a very similar protest (l. 65) in the play. The prologue is spoken by 'the greate foole Toy' (ll. 10, 1945), who would borrow a chain and fiddle from 'my cousin Ned' (l. 7), also called 'Ned foole' (l. 783). The epilogue is spoken (l. 1194) and the songs sung (ll. 117, 1871) by boys. Will Summer (l. 792) gives good advice to certain 'deminitiue urchins', who wait 'on my Lords trencher'; but he might be speaking either to actors or to boys in the audience. The morris (l. 201) dances 'for the credit of Wostershire', where Whitgift had been bishop. The prompter was Dick Huntley (l. 14), and Vertumnus was acted by Harry Baker (l. 1567). There is a good deal of Latin in the text. On the whole, I think that the play was given by members of Whitgift's household, which his biographer describes as 'a little academy'. The prologue (l. 33) has 'So fares it with vs nouices, that here betray our imperfections: we, afraid to looke on the imaginary serpent of Enuy, paynted in mens affections, haue ceased to tune any musike of mirth to your eares this tweluemonth, thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hisse, so childhood and ignorance would play the goslings, contemning and condemning what they vnderstood not'. This agrees curiously in date with the termination of the Paul's plays. Whitgift might have entertained the Paul's boys during the plague and strengthened them for a performance with members of his own household. But would they call themselves 'nouices'?
Dido, Queen of Carthage > 1593 With Marlowe (q.v.).
Lost Plays
Terminus et non Terminus. 1586 < > 8
Vide supra. McKerrow, v. 10, thinks that the name of Nashe's alleged part may be a jest, and points out that the identification by Fleay, ii. 124, of the play, of which nothing more is known, with the 'London Comedie' of the Cards referred to in Harington's Apology (cf. App. C, No. xlv) is improbable.
The Isle of Dogs. 1597
Meres, Palladis Tamia (S. R. 7 Sept. 1598), writes:
'As Actaeon was wooried of his owne hounds: so is Tom Nash of his Isle
of Dogs. Dogges were the death of Euripedes, but bee not disconsolate
gallant young Iuuenall, Linus, the sonne of Apollo died the same death. Yet
God forbid that so braue a witte should so basely perish, thine are but
paper dogges, neither is thy banishment like Ouids, eternally to conuerse
