Thomas Nashe ( 1567 – c. 1601) is considered the greatest of the English Elizabethan pamphleteers. He was a playwright, poet, and satirist. The Choise of Valentines Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo, which alternatively acquired the label "Nashe's Dildo" is an erotic poem by Thomas Nashe, thought to have been composed around 1592 or 1593. The poem survives in three extant manuscript versions and was first printed in 1899. It recounts in the first person a sexual encounter in a brothel between the narrator, Tomalin, and his lover, Mistress Frances. The poem contains the most detailed description of a dildo in Renaissance literature, and constitutes the first known use of the word "dildo", though the word may derive ultimately from popular ballads.
