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Nashe’S Poem For Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, Jennifer L. Andersen

English Faculty Publications

Of "The Choise of Valentines," editor R. B. McKerrow says, "There can, I fear, be little doubt that this poem is the work of ThomasNashe" (V, 141). From the 1590s through the seventeenth century, the poem was not printed but was circulated privately in manuscript copies among a select coterie audience. Five of six extant manuscript copies begin with a dedicatory sonnet, one of which includes a dedication "To the right Honorable the lord S." and another 'To the right HonourableLordStrainge" (Beal 356), offering clues to the specific coterie for which the poem was composed. Although some editors and critics …