ABSTRACT
Readers of the work of the prose satirist, poet, and occasional professional-theatre dramatist Thomas Nashe have long been intrigued by a reference. The allusion to the play appears as part of a mock-biography in The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Gentleman. It is a pamphlet attributed to Richard Lichfield, barber-surgeon of Trinity College, Cambridge. However, a little-known manuscript poem offers a second avenue of approach to Terminus & Non Terminus. The poem is by Robert Mills, a contemporary of Nashe's at St. John's. An EEBO-TCP search for Non Terminus shows that the word has specific meaning. As Steven W. May observes, 'Doleta' surely takes his name from the supposed author of a pamphlet printed. He makes the mischievous suggestion that Gabriel Harvey himself, having fallen on hard times, might have to take up the trade. Nashe appears to refer back to the show in Strange News, and revisits its structure and ideas in writing Summer's Last Will and Testament.
