WASTE PAPER

From one point of view, the production of printed texts is nothing but the production of waste paper. In Gabriel Harvey's opinion, the breed of professional writers who emerged in the 1590s were as inconsequential as their texts. In Foure Letters (1592), he dismisses professionals, such as Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe, who had just published Pierce Penilesse, as little more than insects, and admits that it irritates him to have to discuss such silly matters:

For Harvey, professional writing is a trifling waste of time, but the terrible wastefulness of print was also the consequence of technical progress in late sixteenth-century England. Quantity was not necessarily matched by quality and, compared to manuscript production, the printing press could churn out large numbers of books. Shorter printed books and pamphlets were ephemeral commodities and, however serious their content, they suffered the disintegrative effects of time and use. Printed paper was recycled and put to a number of uses, so that printed texts were often destined to a demeaning passage through material reality.

Nashe's texts shamelessly draw attention to the potential debasement of printed text.