A ‘consummation devoutly to be wished’: The Erotics of Narration in Venus and Adonis

Summary

In a poem written no more than four years after the publication of Venus and Adonis, Thomas Nashe dramatizes that most humiliating of masculine moments – premature ejaculation. In the poem, variously known as ‘The choise of valentines’ or, more popularly (and in the early MSS), as ‘Nashe his Dildo’, the first-person narrator visits ‘mistris Francis’, a high-class and expensive prostitute, who ‘in hir velvet goune’s, / And ruffs, and periwigs as fresh as Maye / Can not be kept with half a croune a daye’ (lines 64–6). The narrator, deciding that this is money well spent, describes her overwhelming performance:

. . . she sprung full lightlie to my lips,

And fast about the neck me colle’s and clips.

She wanton faint’s, and falle’s upon hir bed,

And often tosseth too and fro hir head.

She shutts hir eyes, and waggles with hir tongue:

Oh, who is able to abstaine so long?

I com, I com; sweete lyning be thy leave,

Softlie my fingers, up theis curtaine, heave

And make me happie stealing by degreese. . . .

A prettie rysing wombe without a weame [blemish],

That shone as bright as anie silver streame;

And bare out lyke the bending of an hill,

At whose decline a fountaine dwelleth still,

That hath his mouth besett with uglie bryers

Resembling much a duskie nett of wyres.

A loftie buttock barred with azure veine’s

Whose comelie swelling, when my hand distreine’s,

Or wanton checketh with a harmeless stype,

It makes the fruites of love eftsoone be rype;

And pleasure pluckt too tymelie from the stemme

To dye ere it hath scene Jerusalem.

(lines 93–120)