The Aretine
The writing style of the author of this strange and unique text makes it an entertaining read even when the incidents being covered are such that one might temporarily lose interest. Nearly every page offers at least one image constructed from metaphors or similes or any combination of the two that demand attention and produce a vividly illustrated picture in the mind. One such example is almost an offhand remark about the talent of a certain named Italian writer enjoyed by the narrator:
“His pen was sharp-pointed like a poniard; no leaf he wrote on but was like a burning glass to set on fire all his readers. With more than musket shot did he charge his quill, where he meant to inveigh.”
The Hackster
So self-assured is this Renaissance author of his talent for wielding metaphor like his near-peer Michelangelo had wielded the sculptor’s blade a few decades earlier. Why settle for one sharply defined image when one has enough talent for two? Or even more? Consider the breadth of talent of the executioner here so described:
“At the first chop with his wood-knife would he fish for a man’s heart, and fetch it out as easily as a plum from the bottom of a porridge-pot. He would crack necks as fast as a cook cracks eggs; a fiddler cannot turn his pin so soon as he would turn a man off the ladder.”
That's Punny
Nashe reveals a clear and abundant enjoyment of the English language. Many of those metaphorical images which populate every page are given a second level of meaning through being used as puns. Some of the jokes will fly right by many readers while others will hardly seem worthy of being called a joke. But his enjoyment of even the simplest of connections made by punning seems fairly endless:
“…let me quietly descend to the waning of my youthful days, and tell a little of the sweating-sickness, that made me in a cold sweat take my heels and run out of England.”
Tonal Shifts
The constantly shifting tones of the writing and the manner in which the mood swerves precariously from the comedic to the horrific has come to be very much admired in the age of irony. Historically, however, many critics have faced difficulty in trying to reconcile the coherence of a narrative where the pendulum’s swing between farcical comedy and tense melodrama is cast so widely. The metaphor-laced passages devoted to the incident of the rape of Heraclide is just such an example of how far from humorous the story fluctuates:
“Up she rose after she was deflowered, but loath she arose, as a reprobate soul rising to the day of judgement.”
The Fortunate Traveller
What makes one traveler unfortunate and another fortunate? The narrator divulges the secret to this question and closes up the chasm of its divergence. Through metaphor, of course, which may not be of much use to the literal-minded wanderer:
“He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing, and if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom.”
