The Precarious World of Thomas Nashe
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
Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
Wednesday Feb 08, 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
Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
Wednesday Feb 08, 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
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
Tuesday Feb 07, 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
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
This episode looks at the locations where Nashe hung out. We uncover the link between the print shops and the playhouses of early modern London, and compare the precarious rental market of Elizabethan London with today’s. We zoom out to think about the demographic and political changes happening to London and its relationship with the kingdom beyond. With guests Callan Davies and Vanessa Harding. Transcript https://tinyurl.com/mwjr4uj7
Monday Feb 06, 2023
Monday Feb 06, 2023
Where could a freelance writer like Nashe actually find work in the Elizabethan period? In this episode we explore some of his options: being a writer in residence in the home of a wealthy patron, working for London’s popular stage, or selling his work directly to a publisher. With guests Emma Smith and Andrew McRae. Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/mwjr4uj7
Monday Feb 06, 2023
Monday Feb 06, 2023
This episode looks at how 16th-century education prepared students for the world of work. Discover what Nashe's generation learned at school and university, about the kind of careers they were promised, and what happened when they graduated from university in the 1580s-90s. With guests Colin Burrow, Jennifer Richards, Oscar Haines. Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/mwjr4uj7
Monday Jan 30, 2023
Monday Jan 30, 2023
Join us as we explore the gritty underbelly of Elizabethan England: a time, not of pageants and prosperity, but precarity, poverty, and paranoia.
The Precarious World of Thomas Nashe
Britain today is an increasingly precarious place. Many of us aren’t used to precarity - a condition of uncertainty and exposure as emotional as it is economic. But to the average Elizabethan it was the norm. In these podcasts, featuring experts in the literature and culture of sixteenth-century England, we use the works of the writer Thomas Nashe and his contemporaries to think about what precarity meant then, and means now.
Series funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Produced by Better Lemon Creative Audio. Readings by James Tucker. Artwork by Jessica Heywood.Transcripts at //tinyurl.com/mwjr4uj7