Nashe, Thomas (1567-1601) English satirist and dramatist. A graduate of Cambridge and one of theUniversity Wits, Nashe was a brilliant and original writer and an outstanding personality of his time. His first published piece was the preface to the Menaphon of Robert Greene (1589), in which he attacked pompous contemporary writers; he continued his assessment of contemporary literature in An Anatomie of Absurdities (1589). The Martin Marprelate Controversy gave him a further opportunity to exercise his lively wit under the pseudonym of "Pasquil"; later he entered a bitter controversy with Richard and Gabriel Harvey. This feud was brought to an end by ecclesiastical order in 1599.

Also among Nashe's writings is The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of lack Wilton (1594). A prose romance of adventure, it is a precursor of the English novel and is notable for its detailed, journalistic style. Some critics consider it to be one of the finest examples of prose fiction of the period.

Only one of Nashe's plays has survived, a satirical masque called Summer's Last Will and Testament (1593). He may have collaborated with Christopher Marlowe on Dido, Queen of Carthage (c 1593) and prepared the unfinished play for the stage after Marlowe's death, though the authorship of this play is now in doubt. He worked with Ben Jonson on The Isle of Dogs (1597, not extant), a comedy that resulted in Jonson's imprisonment for a time for having attacked the state.