University Wits and Their Contributions

Question : Essay-type 

Who were the 'University Wits'? Why are they called so? Briefly assess their contributions to the field of drama.

University Wits : A Group of 16th Century Playwrights and Pamphleteers

Introduction 

The 'University Wits' were a group of well educated scholars-cum-men of letters who wrote in the sixteenth century. They were called 'University Wits' because they were students of one or the other of two universities--Oxford and Cambridge. They laid a sure basis for the English theatre and paved the way for Shakespeare.

Before the advent of the University Wits, English drama stood at the cross roads. It could either follow the classical models or the native tradition. On the one hand there was drama of Alien origin, rich but academic, and on the other, one of native growth which needed polish and discipline. The function of University Wits was to combine the form of classicists with the fire or vigour of the native dramatists.

Now let us consider the individual contribution of each of the University Wits to the development of English drama.

John Lyly 

John Lyly is better known for his prose romance Euphues. But he gave comedy a sense of sophistication which was hither to lacking in the native comedy. In such plays as Alexander and Campaspe, Endimion and The Woman in the Moon, Lyly gives us the first example of romantic comedy. In his plays he used a mixture of verse and prose which is suggestive of his mixing of the world of reality and romance. The same fusion is to be found in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and As You Like It. Lyly found a suitable blank verse for comedy as Marlowe did for tragedy.

George Peele 

Peele's plays include The Arraignment of Paris, a kind of romantic comedy, The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First, The Old Wives' Tale, a satire and The Love Of King David And Fair Bethsabe. His plays are not marked by any technical brilliance. Rickett says that he shares with Marlowe the honour of investing blank verse with a rare musical quality. He is fluent. He has humour and a fair amount of pathos.

Robert Greene 

Of Greene's four plays Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is his best play. In this play and James the Fourth, he contributed substantially towards the establishment of romantic comedy. As regards characterization, Nicoll gives him the credit of being the first to draw like the Rosalinds and Celias of Elizabethan times. Dorothea, the heroine of James the Fourth is one of the best known of all the female characters in the Elizabethan drama. His style is not outstanding merit. But his humour is somewhat genial in his plays.

Thomas Nashe and Thomas Lodge 

Thomas Nashe [1567-1601]

Their dramatic work is not at all remarkable. Nashe finished Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. His only surviving play is Summer's Last Will and Testament, a satirical masque. Lodge, probably, collaborated with Shakespeare in Henry VI, and with other dramatists. His only surviving play is The Wounds of Civil War, a chronicle play.

Thomas Kyd 

Kyd's only play The Spanish Tragedy is modelled on Senecan's revenge tragedies. In this play there are murders and bloodshed, suicides and plenty of horrifying incidents, and so many other Senecan features.

The Spanish Tragedy : London printed cover photo 

Kyd's novelty lies in the fact that in his play there is much action on the stage. The Elizabethan audience had a keen craving for action. Kyd provided them with this. Naturally his play is a Senecan play adopted to popular requirements. Besides, he gave English tragedy a new kind of tragic hero who is an ordinary person. He introduced an element of introspection in the hero. Thus he paved the way for Shakespeare's Hamlet. His blank verse was ridiculed for its pomposity and exaggeration even by his contemporaries. 

Christopher Marlowe 

Christopher Marlowe [1564-1593]

Marlowe is the greatest of all the University Wits. His plays are all tragedy as he has no bent for comedy. His play Tamburlaine is centered on an inhuman figure. The play is episodic and lacking in cohesion. Yet it contains much of Marlowe's best blank verse. The Jew of Malta is an anti-Jewish play with plenty of melodrama. Edward II shows the trust scene of the theatre of all his plays. Its plot is skillfully woven. The play has less poetic fervour than some of the others. Doctor Faustus is a great tragedy based on the medieval legend of Faust. The play contains some interesting survivals of miracle plays. 

Marlowe exalted and varied the subject matter of tragedy. For the Senecan motive of revenge, he substituted the theme of ambition--ambition for power as in Tamburlaine, ambition for knowledge as in Doctor Faustus and ambition for gold as in The Jew of Malta. 

Marlowe put forward a new concept of tragic hero. He revived the Aristotelian conception as he introduced a certain flow in the hero's character. Besides, along with the outer conflict in his plays, there is, at least in Doctor Faustus, a struggle in the mind of the hero. Marlowe gave a greater unity to the drama. This he did in Edward II. One of his chief merits lies in his information of the chronicle plays of his times. He humanized the puppets of those plays. 

It is, indeed, that as a poet Marlowe excels. Though not the first to use blank verse in English drama, he was the first to make it supreme. The passage in Doctor Faustus such as those describing the aspiration of Faustus and the famous rhapsody on the beauty of Helen of Troy shows the remarkable adapted of ability of this metre in the hands of a poet. The power of his verse led Ben Jonson to coin the phrase-- "Marlowe's mighty line". 

Conclusion 

The University Wits really laid a sure basis for the English theatre and paved the way to the advent of Shakespeare.

-------------------------------

Download Now

---------------------------

👉History of English Literature

---------------

👉All Graduate Posts

👉Home Page

---------------