The Choise of Valentines Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo

by Thomas Nashe, John Stephen Farmer (Editor)

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, British Literature

38 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Thomas Nashe (November 1567 – c. 1601) was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poem, written around 1592, is startlingly naughty. An extract (you can find the whole thing here):

What shall I doe to shewe myself a man?
It will not be for ought that beawtie can.
I kisse, I clap, I feele, I view at will,
Yett dead he lyes not thinking good or ill.
Vnhappie me, quoth shee, and wilt' not stand?
Com, lett me rubb and chafe it with my hand.
Perhaps the sillie worme is labour'd sore,
And wearied that it can doe no more.
If it be so (as I am greate a-dread)
I wish tenne thousand times, that I were dead.
How ere it is; no meanes shall want in me,
That maie auaile to his recouerie.
Which saide, she tooke and rould it on hir thigh,
And when she lookt' on't, she would weepe and sighe,
And dandled it, and dance't it up and doune,
Not ceasing, till she rais'd it from his swoune.
And then he flue on hir as he were wood
And on her breeche did thack, and foyne a-good

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nashe's jaunty, naughty poem has been dismissed for years by critics and scholars as a piece of 'worthless' poetry or 'pornography' - but has been resurrected more recently by scholars interested in re-opening the question of what the erotic might allow writers to do, and how it functions discursively in the Renaissance.

Drawing on Ovid's Amores 1.5 and 3.7, this shuttles between images of power and impotence as Tomalin's disobedient penis ('silly little worm') is replaced by Francis' dildo. But beneath the surface bawdy, this is also a text which pushes the boundaries of what might be said and what has to be muted, even while it constructs and deconstructs cultural ideas of masculinity and femininity.

Circulating in manuscript from c.1590, this wasn't published until 1899 (and then as a piece of Victorian gentleman's pornography!) but the various surviving manuscripts (including one owned by a woman) are a testament to its popularity and reach. Essential reading as a counterpoint to Petrarchan poetry and for anyone interested in how fantasies of sex and desire function in the Renaissance period.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

You may read online here.

[Monty Ashley]

This is straight-up porn, and not very good porn at that. However, it has historical interest, in that it is apparently the first written appearance of the word "dildo." A lot of this poem is about the dildo, in fact. The other interesting thing is that this was written at the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, who at about the same time had sponsored Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. That one is also porn-adjacent, but it's classier because it's by Shakespeare.

The Earl of Southampton may also be the gentlemen to whom Shakespeare addressed his sonnets. He looked like this, which is pretty much what you'd expect a late-Sixteenth Century upper-class porn aficionado to look like. Fascinating dude.

[Olivia Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible scenes

[Katheryn Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (Penguin 1972)

[Marius Emanuelsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poem about a dildo is also a kind of dildo. The subtitle, then, is surprisingly precise.

[Ian Calandro · Rating 1 out of 5]

This poem was first written in 1592, and was published in 1899. If it was kept underground for three hundred years it was probably something the world was never meant to see.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

shoutout katie 10/10

[Ruby Saggers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having a seminar on erotic bodies this year was not on my bucket list…

[Olivia Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

naughty nashe!

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great poem about a dildo

[Sem · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title says it all. It's a very merry dildo indeed.