From Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions (1594).
For clarity: course is the subject; tithes is the verb. To seek a knot in a bulrush is an idiom: “to engage in a futile task, to try to find problems where none exist.”
The Terrors of the Night is no. 30 in the Penguin Little Black Classics boxed set.
Also from this volume
“Undigested” : “Gold and a buttoned cap”
Friday, September 5, 2025
“A knot in a bulrush”
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comments: 7
And "his" where I would expect "its." The old writers are full of surprises.
I think Thomas Nashe’s governing principle is that he can do whatever he wants. :)
It makes me think of Hamlet’s “to be” speech.
I think WS must have read or at least known of this work.
From the https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/thomas-nashe-elizabethan-england/: “He collaborated with Shakespeare as part of the writing team that produced the three Henry VI plays, and was almost certainly responsible for the first act of Henry VI, Part One.” Which doesn’t mean that Shakespeare read The Terrors of the Night, but it seems more likely than not.
Fresca here.
Reminds me of this, which I find helpful when I am fretting about work at the thrift store – –
Matthew 6:34 (KJV)
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Yep. As we say, we've got enough trouble already.
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