The Choise of Valentines; Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo — A Closer Reading

A Pastoral Frame for a Brothel Tale

The poem's first lines establish a springtime setting: the speaker rises early, puts on his best clothes, and heads to the fair at Manningtree. The language is that of Elizabethan pastoral—'summer sheene,' 'creame and cakes,' 'country franklins' and their wives. This is the world of festive courtship, of Valentine's Day as a day for lovers. But the speaker's quest is not for a sweetheart; it is for a prostitute. The transition is abrupt: after describing the fair, he tells how a rival suitor scared off his intended, forcing her 'for Sanctuarie' into a house of 'venery.' The pastoral frame thus becomes a pretext, a conventional opening that makes the ensuing obscenity more jarring. Nash uses the contrast to signal that this is a poem about the gap between idealized love and commercial sex.

The Negotiation: Language of Commerce and Religion

Once inside the brothel, the speaker's encounter with the prostitute is mediated through a series of transactions. She demands a 'God's-pennie'—an earnest payment—before admitting him. The brothel itself is called an 'oratorie,' a term that parodies religious language: the bawd is an 'abbess,' the prostitute a 'nun.' This sacrilegious vocabulary runs throughout the negotiation scene. The speaker, for his part, adopts the role of a penitent, asking to 'unlade so bad a fraught' from his mind. But the transaction is purely financial: he pays, she unlocks the door, and he enters 'sweet Venus' chamber. The poem's language here is precise about the economics of desire—every stage of the encounter is marked by an exchange of money for access.

The Epilogue and the Problem of Audience

The poem concludes with a verse epilogue addressed to the Earl of Southampton, in which Nash apologizes for the 'lasciuious witt' of the preceding lines. He promises that, once his mind is purged, he will write 'with purifide words and hallowed verse' in the Earl's praise. This framing device is crucial: it acknowledges that the poem is a piece of hackwork, written for gain, and that its author is aware of its impropriety. The editor's introduction reinforces this, citing Nash's own admission that poverty forced him 'to pen unedifying toys for gentlemen.' The epilogue thus turns the poem into a kind of confession—a document not just of obscenity, but of the economic pressures that produced it. The reader is left to judge whether the apology is sincere or merely a rhetorical gesture.

Readers approaching this text should attend to the interplay between its manuscript history and its printed form. The editor's notes record variant readings from the two surviving copies, revealing how the poem was transmitted and altered. The line notes, moved to the end of the poem, offer a glimpse into the scribal culture that preserved such works. Consider how the poem's obscenity is both a literary performance and a historical artifact—a product of the same Elizabethan milieu that produced Shakespeare's sonnets and the plays of the public stage.

I’ve often thought Nash’s rough ode, with its awkward confession tucked behind the bawdry, shares a strange quiet with The Nibelungenlied Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original — Context and Discussion — both carry a formal meter straining against wilder, older feelings. One hides grief in armour, the other in jest. Both, if you listen closely, tremble.