Richard Lichfield (died 1630) was a

barber surgeon The barber surgeon, one of the most common European medical practitioners of the Middle Ages, was generally charged with caring for soldiers during and after battle. In this era, surgery was seldom conducted by physicians, but instead by barbers ...

Cambridge, England Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge became ...

, during the late 16th and early 17th century. In 1597 he wrote a pamphlet sharply criticising the writer

Thomas Nashe Thomas Nashe (baptised November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel ''The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including ''Pierce Penniless,'' a ...

, which for many years was believed to be the work of

Gabriel Harvey Gabriel Harvey (c. 1552/3 – 1631) was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, whose reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe. Henry Morley, writing in the ''Fortnightly Review'' (March 1869), has argued that Harvey's Lati ...

. Although not a member of the academic community Lichfield belonged to the property-owning middle class, and had a local reputation as a humorist. His humour took the form of parodies of learned speeches, complete with phony

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

isms, evidently a popular genre at Cambridge and one in which other barbers are also said to have excelled. Nashe's pamphlet ''

Have with You to Saffron-Walden "Have With You To Saffron-Walden, Or, Gabriell Harveys hunt is up" is the title of a pamphlet written by Thomas Nashe and published in London in late 1596 by John Danter. The work is Nashe's final shot in his four-year literary feud with Dr. Gab ...

'' (1596) had been dedicated to Lichfield in a provocative and slyly insolent way. After a brief delay, Lichfield answered it with ''The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Gentleman'', (1597). For many years it was assumed that Harvey himself had adopted the persona of Lichfield and written the reply to Nashe, but the style of the pamphlet is nothing like his and appears quite genuinely to be by Lichfield, and is generally so accepted today. Certainly when Nashe light-heartedly threatened a demolition of the work in ''Nashes Lenten Stuffe''- "...stay till Ester Terme, and then, with the answere to the ''Trim Tram'', I will make you laugh your hearts out" McKerrow, p. 151 - he does not suggest it is Harvey's. Lichfield's pamphlet is interesting to literary historians because it gives some biographical details on Nashe which would otherwise not be known, and makes a glancing reference to the rising Cambridge satirist, Joseph Hall.

Notes

References

* McKerrow, Ronald Brunlees (ed.) (1910) ''The Works of Thomas Nashe'' Vol. III, 2nd ed., London: Sidgwick and Jackson * Nicholl, Charles (1984) ''A Cup of News: The life of Thomas Nashe'' 1st ed., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

External links

''The Trimming of Thomas Nashe''
at th

edited by Nina Green. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lichfield, Richard 1630 deaths Year of birth unknown English pamphleteers 16th-century English writers 16th-century male writers 17th-century English writers 17th-century English male writers British surgeons People from Cambridge