A Litany in Time of Plague

“The Fearful Summer” by John Taylor (1625)

A professional pamphleteer and poet like Nashe, John Taylor wrote on a broad variety of topics, and his poem “The Fearful Summer” laments the moral lapse and corrupted condition of England that brought about God’s wrath and consequently another outbreak of plague. While Taylor accepts and approves of God’s decision to punish England with disease, he ultimately still hopes that the disease and God’s anger will pass when England repents. “The Fearful Summer” also personifies Death and contains references to condemned houses with the plaque “Lord, have mercy upon us” on their doors, just as Nashe’s poem does.

“Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness” by John Donne (1635)

Much of John Donne’s poetry focused on the topic of death, and “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness” is no exception. Donne makes his peace with death, because he sees it merely as a necessary step on his journey to Heaven, and feels “joy” during his sickness as he anticipates the next world. Donne’s poem highlights Renaissance England’s spiritual perspective on death and also shows how life-threatening sickness could be in that period.

“Made When I Was Sick, 1647” by Hester Pulter

None of Pulter’s poetry was published during her lifetime, as much of her poetry explored very intimate and personal subject matter like the death of her children, her religious insecurities, and her own struggles with illness. “Made When I Was Sick, 1647” perfectly emphasizes the tension between spiritual eagerness for death and a physical fear of mortality. Like Donne’s “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness,” Pulter’s poem shows how the severity of illnesses in the Early Modern Period often turned the sufferer’s thoughts towards their own eventual death and eternal fate.

“The Final Moment Before Death in Early Modern England” by Richard Wunderli and Gerald Broce (1989)

This article explores the attitudes towards death in Early Modern England and contextualizes the religious infatuation with the “final moment” or a person’s last action before death. Wunderli and Broce highlight the importance of an almost spiritual bravado and acceptance of death in a believer’s last moments as a sign of their salvation. Their exploration of the topic is helpful when considered alongside Nashe’s “A Litany in Time of Plague,” which portrays a kind of casual acceptance of death as a step towards a better eternity.

“Plagues and Publication: Ballads and the Representation of Disease in the English Renaissance” by Sharon Achinstein (1992)

Achinstein’s article provides insight into the way early modern literature talked about the plague, as well as that culture’s perspective on professional writers. Achinstein examines the paranoia surrounding the dangerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague that occurred in England throughout the Renaissance and explores the potential political agenda behind the plague prevention tactics used at the time.

“Laughter in the Time of Plague: A Context for the Unstable Style of Nashe’s ‘Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem’” by Beatrice Groves (2011)

While Groves spends most of her article exploring the tension between comedic and sermonic elements at play in Thomas Nashe’s other work Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, she also explores Nashe’s complicated response towards the plague in his entire body of work. The second half of the article provides context for Nashe’s poem “A Litany in Time of Plague” within the larger work Summer’s Last Will and Testament.

“Bubonic Plague: The First Pandemic” by ScienceMuseum.org.uk (2019)

This article provides an overview of the symptoms of the bubonic plague and explains how the plague continued to spread for hundreds of years around the world. The article also offers insights into how different cultures and countries, including Nashe’s England, responded to the threat of the disease.