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Todd
- Florida
- Last Record: 2013-06-19 11:03:51 -0400
- Joined: Jul 30, 2010
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Son, it's time to get fitted for your clothes. |
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Are lyrics merely words for tunes not yet |
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A spacious booth stands just outside a busy hospital next to a |
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Thomas Nash wrote this in 1592/3 ot thereabouts (it wasn't published) for The Earl of Southhampton, Henry Wriothesley, who was nineteen or twenty years old at the time. William Shakespeare also wrote for the same Earl at the same time, dedicating Venus and Adonis to him. This relationship of the two poems is what first attracted me to Nash's Dildo (to put it tongue-in-cheek - although that also has its own weird meaning now that I think about it when such a phrase is associated with a dildo - oh well).
Apparantly, these two long poems were written at the young Earl's personal request seeing as how they both seem to have the same general theme of passionate and mysterious sex. That Nash and Shakespeare were using the same patron at the same time kind of shows that Nash and Shakespeare probably knew each other pretty well.
It's in the public domain, and I got the text of the unpublished manuscript (it's actually two unpublished manuscripts written years after Nash wrote it - apparantly copied by fans of the poem for preservation - these original manuscripts are in the Bodleian Library and the Inner Temple) from a few different sources on the web. Its official title is The Choice of Valentines. Its subtitle is The Merry Ballad of Nash His Dildo. If you can't understand my reading (I only made a few minor errors, like saying 'stipes' instead of 'stripes,' and at one point in my reading chose to repeat a word for emphasis) and wish to find the text to read yourself, I'm sure you may do so by searching the internet using your favorite search engine.
I found the poem to be funny. That's why I decided to do a reading of it. Perhaps I'll do my own reading of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis at some point in the future, but I found this one to be a little more entertaining and enjoyable than that one. It was difficult to tell at times which of the characters was speaking in my almost nineteen-minutes reading, so I made an effort to be vague about that as I read it. In some cases, either of the main characters could have been saying the words, and they have a slightly different meaning if you choose to hear one or the other character as the speaker. I like this ambiguity, but at the same time wish Nash had been a little more clear.
I also found Nash's reference to Tamberlaine ('Tomerlin', as he wrote it) in his poem to be a reference to Christopher Marlowe. I think this reference has some intrigue which I plan to explore further.
I also found his reference to "dancing school" to be interesting. The term, "dancing," as I have learned, was a euphamism for sex in the 16th century. Seems it wasn't much different back then from what it is today.
Nash's use of "he" and "him" (and "her" and "she")throughout this poem does not always refer to a person - I thought I'd mention that just in case you get a little confused about the meaning of those particular pronouns. Nash makes great use of other words such as 'spirit,' 'soul,' 'nectar,' 'mouth,' 'hill,' 'wheels,' and many others in this poem which are also not used with their surface meaning. Oh yeah, I should mention that "hackney" is a horse for rent. "Jade" also refers to a livery stable horse for hire.
I don't think there is much opportunity to remix this one, though you are welcome to if you wish. I suppose you could act it out - but if you did it would have to have an NC-17 rating - it would probably even get an "XXX" rating in the US, even though its literary value is without question. I suppose one could do an animation and apply symbolic representation of things, but I think that would detract, since the words already do that. Still, there is probably a way to remix this, and if you are encouraged by my reading to do so, I'll take it as the compliment it is!
I performed it merely for your entertainment, that's all. It's a very long poem, but no longer than any sitcom on TV today. My suggestion is you listen to this poem after you flip through the channels on TV and find nothing on the 600 or more channels you have available, since I'm almost certain (provided you are not a Nash Scholar) you've NEVER heard this poem before, and it is bound to just as good as a re-run of an older TV sitcom that you have seen already.
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A: I want to write a story. |
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An ink stain blots the page and it begins: |
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My great nephew, so dubbed not only by virtue of our relationship but also by his own admirable innate individuality, was in eager anticipation of seeing ... |
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STRAWBERRY BOOTLACE FLAVOURED SODA<... |
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The best way to begin writing anything is to begin writing anything.
Now for some boring notes... 1. Although not... |
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source:
page 156
The Fables of Aesop Ballantyne Press "now again edited and induced by Joseph Jacobs." LoNDON. Published by David Nutt in THE Strand, m.v.cccl.xxxix. (1889) http://www.archive.org/details/fablesofaesopasf02aesouoft
originally written by William Caxton in 1484
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I heard the choir sing and looked their way - |
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