The Precarious World of Thomas Nashe

By: The ’Penniless?’ Project
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  • Summary

  • There’s a fairy-tale version of the Elizabethan era: a golden age of long-awaited prosperity, of palaces and pageants, of sea-faring exploration - all of it presided over by a spectacular queen governing alongside wise counsellors. There’s a lot this story misses out. Elizabethan England was also an anxious, paranoid place; its last full decade, the 1590s, saw increasing food prices, plague, and profiteering by the wealthy. One writer in particular explored what it felt like to be living on the edge. Thomas Nashe isn’t a household name today, but he wrote and published throughout the turbulent 1590s. In these podcasts, we explore the writings of Nashe and his contemporaries to open up the precarious world in which they lived.
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Episodes
  • Episode 6: Ghosts

    Episode 6: Ghosts
    Feb 8 2023

    This final episode explores Nashe's interest in ghosts: beings stuck between this world and the next. What is it about living in precarious times which lends itself to this gothic mode of writing? In answering this question, we will hear about Nashe’s work ‘The Terrors of the Night’ and the Elizabethan enthusiasm for predicting the future. Featured guests: Liz Oakley-Brown and Rachel White. Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/mwjr4uj7
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    26 mins
  • Episode 5: Plague

    Episode 5: Plague
    Feb 8 2023

    Nashe’s literary career was affected by a pandemic and a lockdown. In 1592 an outbreak of bubonic plague closed London’s theatres, the primary venue for commercial literature, and writers had to work out how to respond. Plague became an unfolding news story, and shaped Nashe’s improvisatory style. With guests Kirsty Rolfe and Andrew Hadfield. Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/mwjr4uj7
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    27 mins
  • Episode 4: Experimental Forms

    Episode 4: Experimental Forms
    Feb 7 2023

    This episode explores how Nashe’s style was shaped by the socio-economic, religious, and cultural circumstances of late Elizabethan England. It looks at how Nashe's works are driven by paradoxes: by an elitist contempt for the populist strategies he uses to make a living, and the sense of himself as both insider and outsider. With guests Joe Black and Sam Fallon. Transcripts: https://tinyurl.com/mwjr4uj7
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    25 mins

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Profile Image for Derek Hunter

Engaging Exploration of Nashe and his Times

This podcast mini-series is excellently well done, thoroughly researched, professionally presented, and very entertaining. It is insightful not only to Thomas Nashe but the times in which he lived. Nashe is primarily used in this series as a window into the cultural, social, economic, literary realities of the period. Highly recommend not only this series but checking out Nashe's work, as well.

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