The Choise of Valentines; or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo

This is the poem that gave English literature its most notorious four-letter word. Written by the Elizabethan satirist Thomas Nashe during the 1590s, it follows a lovesick speaker through the streets of London on a February quest for his valentine. He finds her fled to a brothel, banters with a bawd in an increasingly outrageous exchange about satisfying desire, and ultimately resolves his longing with an extraordinary substitute. The dildo becomes both comic device and bitter commentary on the hollowness of romantic pursuit. Nashe shreds Petrarchan love conventions while exposing the raw commerce underlying Elizabethan courtship. Four centuries later, it remains startlingly contemporary: a bawdy, sharp, genuinely funny assault on the lies we tell about love and longing.