Richard Lichfield

Last updated
Woodcut depicting Nashe in fetters from Lichfield's The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Gentleman. Thomas-Nashe.jpg
Woodcut depicting Nashe in fetters from Lichfield's The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Gentleman.

Richard Lichfield (died 1630) was a barber surgeon in Cambridge, England, during the late 16th and early 17th century. In 1597 he wrote a pamphlet [1] sharply criticising the writer Thomas Nashe, which for many years was believed to be the work of Gabriel Harvey.

Contents

Although not a member of the academic community Lichfield belonged to the property-owning middle class, and had a local reputation as a humorist. [2] His humour took the form of parodies of learned speeches, complete with phony Latinisms, evidently a popular genre at Cambridge and one in which other barbers are also said to have excelled. [3]

Nashe's pamphlet Have with You to Saffron-Walden (1596) had been dedicated to Lichfield in a provocative and slyly insolent way. [4] After a brief delay, Lichfield answered it with The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Gentleman, (1597). For many years it was assumed that Harvey himself had adopted the persona of Lichfield and written the reply to Nashe, but the style of the pamphlet is nothing like his and appears quite genuinely to be by Lichfield, and is generally so accepted today. [5] Certainly when Nashe light-heartedly threatened a demolition of the work in Nashes Lenten Stuffe- "...stay till Ester Terme, and then, with the answere to the Trim Tram, I will make you laugh your hearts out" [6] - he does not suggest it is Harvey's.

Lichfield's pamphlet is interesting to literary historians because it gives some biographical details on Nashe which would otherwise not be known, and makes a glancing reference to the rising Cambridge satirist, Joseph Hall.

Notes

  1. The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Gentleman, London, 1597
  2. "It is given out among scholars that thou hast a passing singular good wit": Nashe, in McKerrow, p. 16
  3. Nicholl, p.234
  4. Nicholl, p. 236
  5. Nicholl, p. 236: "The old chestnut that Lichfield was just a pseudonym for Harvey has long been discarded..."
  6. McKerrow, p. 151

Related Research Articles

Barnabe Barnes was an English poet. He is known for his Petrarchan love sonnets and for his combative personality, involving feuds with other writers and culminating in an alleged attempted murder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Whately</span> English academic, philosopher, and theologian

Richard Whately was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist, and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman, a prolific and combative author over a wide range of topics, a flamboyant character, and one of the first reviewers to recognise the talents of Jane Austen.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1597.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Nashe</span> 16th-century English pamphleteer and poet

Thomas Nashe was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel The Unfortunate Traveller, his pamphlets including Pierce Penniless, and his numerous defences of the Church of England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Marprelate</span> Name used by anti-episcopal author(s) in the late 1500s

Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts that circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589. Their principal focus was an attack on the episcopacy of the Anglican Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriel Harvey</span> English author (c. 1552/3 – 1631)

Gabriel Harvey was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, whose reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe. Henry Morley, writing in the Fortnightly Review, has argued that Harvey's Latin works demonstrate that he was distinguished by qualities very different from the pedantry and conceit usually associated with his name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Gerard</span> English botanist and author (1545–1612)

John Gerard was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London. His 1,484-page illustrated Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes, first published in 1597, became a popular gardening and herbal book in English in the 17th century. Except for some added plants from his own garden and from North America, Gerard's Herbal is largely a plagiarised English translation of Rembert Dodoens's 1554 herbal, itself highly popular in Dutch, Latin, French and other English translations. Gerard's Herball drawings of plants and the printer's woodcuts are mainly derived from Continental European sources, but there is an original title page with a copperplate engraving by William Rogers. Two decades after Gerard's death, the book was corrected and expanded to about 1,700 pages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marprelate Controversy</span> Puritan versus Church of England pamphlet "war"

The Marprelate Controversy was a war of pamphlets waged in England and Wales in 1588 and 1589, between a puritan writer who employed the pseudonym Martin Marprelate, and defenders of the Church of England which remained an established church.

The Isle of Dogs is a play by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson which was performed in 1597. It was immediately suppressed, and no copy of it is known to exist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Weever</span> English antiquary and poet

John Weever (1576–1632) was an English antiquary and poet. He is best known for his Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion (1599), containing epigrams on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other poets of his day, and for his Ancient Funerall Monuments, the first full-length book to be dedicated to the topic of English church monuments and epitaphs, which was published in 1631, the year before his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Barber</span> Jamaican manservant and assistant of Samuel Johnson (c. 1742/3 –1801)

Francis Barber, born Quashey, was the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson's death in 1784. Johnson made him his residual heir, with £70 a year to be given him by trustees, expressing the wish that he move from London to Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson's native city. After Johnson's death, Barber did this, opening a draper's shop and marrying a local woman. Barber was also bequeathed Johnson's books and papers, and a gold watch. In later years he had acted as Johnson's assistant in revising his famous Dictionary of the English Language and other works. Barber was also an important source for James Boswell concerning Johnson's life in the years before Boswell himself knew Johnson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Greene (dramatist)</span> English author (1558–1592)

Robert Greene (1558–1592) was an English author popular in his day, and now best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance, widely believed to contain an attack on William Shakespeare. Greene was a popular Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer known for his negative critiques of his colleagues. He is said to have been born in Norwich. He attended Cambridge where he received a BA in 1580, and an M.A. in 1583 before moving to London, where he arguably became the first professional author in England. He was prolific and published in many genres including romances, plays and autobiography.

Cuthbert Burby was a London bookseller and publisher of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He is known for publishing a series of significant volumes of English Renaissance drama, including works by William Shakespeare, Robert Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe.

Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, FBA was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pasquill (the Cavaliero)</span>

Pasquill is the pseudonym adopted by a defender of the Anglican hierarchy in an English political and theological controversy of the 1580s known as the "Marprelate controversy" after "Martin Marprelate", the nom de plume of a Puritan critic of the Anglican establishment. The names of Pasquill and his friend "Marforius", with whom he has a dialogue in the second of the tracts issued in his name, are derived from those of "Pasquino" and "Marforio", the two most famous of the talking statues of Rome, where from the early 16th century on it was customary to paste up anonymous notes or verses commenting on current affairs and scandals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Have with You to Saffron-Walden</span> Pamphlet

"Have with You to Saffron-Walden, or, Gabriell Harveys Hunt Is Up" is the title of a pamphlet written by Thomas Nashe and published in London in late 1596 by John Danter. The work is Nashe's final shot in his four-year literary feud with Dr. Gabriel Harvey. It consists of title-page, epistle dedicatory, an address to "all Christian Readers", and a lengthy dialogue between five characters.

<i>Greenes Groats-Worth of Wit</i> 1592 tract by Robert Greene

Greenes, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance (1592) is a tract published as the work of the Elizabethan author Robert Greene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Chute</span> English poet and pamphleteer

Anthony Chute was an English poet and pamphleteer. Very little is known about him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriel Spenser</span> 16th-century English actor

Gabriel Spenser, also spelt Spencer, was an Elizabethan actor. He is best known for episodes of violence culminating in his death in a duel at the hands of the playwright Ben Jonson.

<i>Pierce Penniless</i> 1592 pamphlet by Thomas Nashe

Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Divell is a tall tale, or a prose satire, written by Thomas Nashe and published in London in 1592. It was among the most popular of the Elizabethan pamphlets. It was reprinted in 1593 and 1595, and in 1594 was translated into French. It is written from the point of view of Pierce, a man who has not met with good fortune, who now bitterly complains of the world's wickedness, and addresses his complaints to the devil. At times the identity of Pierce seems to conflate with Nashe's own. But Nashe also portrays Pierce as something of an arrogant and prodigal fool. The story is told in a style that is complex, witty, fulminating, extemporaneous, digressive, anecdotal, filled with wicked descriptions, and peppered with newly minted words and Latin phrases. The satire can be mocking and bitingly sharp, and at times Nashe’s style seems to relish its own obscurity.

References