Summer's Last Will and Testament - Genre

Genre

Nashe developed Summer's Last Will and Testament out of the interlude form that was popular in the royal and noble courts of sixteenth-century England; and he anticipates the masque that would evolve during the Jacobean and Caroline eras. The play can be seen as a bridge between the 16th-century interlude and the 17th-century masque; it features personifications of the four seasons, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and "Ver." Summer is the "king of the world," but now old and declining, and ready to make his will. First, all the officers and members of the kingdom are summoned to yield their accounts. The presences of Bacchus, satyrs, nymphs, hunters, reapers, maids and clowns and Morris dancers (complete with hobby horse), give the play a strongly pastoral feeling.

The term "summer" in the title has a double meaning: the play is introduced and presented by the figure of Will Summer, or Summers, the jester of King Henry VIII. Summers had an enduring reputation with the Elizabethan public; he would be brought back to the stage by Samuel Rowley in When You See Me You Know Me (printed 1605). The clown-figure of Summers provides a level of satire to the morality-play style allegory of the plot.

Some writers have seen "Ver" (Spring) as an allusion to, or even a caricature of, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

In one view, Nashe produced his play by rewriting and expanding an earlier interlude by John Lyly that was performed in 1591. In the play, Will Summers embodies a reaction to the type of overly formal drama represented by Lyly.

The play also contains a poem that later acquired independent fame, 'Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss.' This contains the famous couplet, "Brightness falls from the air, Queens have died young and fair." The lyric 'Spring, sweet spring' has also received attention from critics and anthologists.