Portrait traditionally identified as Christopher Marlowe (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)
Satirical print from the pamphlet Greene in Conceit (1598) depicting the deceased Robert Greene (wearing a winding sheet) still writing from beyond the grave.
The University Wits is a phrase used to name a group of late 16th-century English playwrights and pamphleteers who were educated at the universities (Oxford or Cambridge) and who became popular secular writers. Prominent members of this group were Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe from Cambridge, and John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele from Oxford. Thomas Kyd is also sometimes included in the group, though he was not from either of the aforementioned universities.
This diverse and talented loose association of London writers and dramatists set the stage for the theatrical Renaissance of Elizabethan England. They are identified as among the earliest professional writers in English, and prepared the way for the writings of William Shakespeare, who was born just two months after Marlowe.
The University Wits, on leaving their universities faced the Elizabethan problem discussed by Francis Bacon in his essay, "Of Seditions and Troubles" — schools were producing more scholars than there were opportunities. The University Wits found employment in theatre, not their first choice, but there was little else for them. Their great educations discouraged taking up the humble trades of their fathers — it’s hard to picture the brilliantly educated Marlowe mending shoes. The fear and bitter anxiety caused by this plight for ambitious graduates is the basis for the three Parnassus plays, which were written by Cambridge students in their last year. This is the sting that explains the bitterly competitive feelings between University Wits, and wits who did not attend university.[1][2]
^Saintsbury, George. History of Elizabethan Literature, MacMillan, London, 1887, pp.60-82
^Hunter, G. K. "English Drama 1586-1642 The Age of Shakespeare". Clarendon Press 1997. ISBN 978-0198122135 p. 22.
bitterly competitive feelings between UniversityWits, and wits who did not attend university. The term "UniversityWits" was not used in their lifetime, but...
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (/vətˈvɑːtəsrɑːnt/), commonly known as WitsUniversity or Wits, is a multi-campus public research university...
Look up wits in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. WITS or Wits may refer to: Wales Interpretation and Translation Service, a Welsh not-for-profit organisation...
include the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, his fellow UniversityWits, Thomas Nashe, and Robert Greene, arguably the first professional authors...
author of the Cambridge University play The Return from Parnassus (1598) who wrote, "Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, / Wit lent from heaven, but...
William Shakespeare, there were commonly reckoned to be five wits and five senses. The five wits were sometimes taken to be synonymous with the five senses...
Wits, a term coined later, were an identifiable group of literary and intellectual aesthetes and dandies, present as undergraduates at the University...
[citation needed] It alludes to the Oxford Wits of the 1920s. Those supposed to be in the New Oxford Wits were Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Tina Brown...
Connecticut Wits, the group formed in the late 18th century as a literary society at Yale College and then assumed a new name, the Hartford Wits. Their writings...
movement directly. The New UniversityWits (a term applied by William Van O'Connor in his 1963 study The New UniversityWits and the End of Modernism)...
Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and Thomas Lodge, as one of the so-called UniversityWits. He has been credited by some scholars with writing the first English...
generally considered the best of that group of writers known as the UniversityWits, influenced playwrights well into the Jacobean period, and echoes of...
In the latter part of his life—possibly about 1596, when he published his Wits Miserie and the World's Madnesse, which is dated from Low Leyton in Essex...
Retrieved 13 May 2011. "Short history of the University | Getting to know Wits | About Wits - WitsUniversity". Archived from the original on 27 December...
trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself (the so-called "UniversityWits"). The italicised...
of Chastity. Peele belonged to the group of university scholars who, in Greene's phrase, "spent their wits in making playes." Greene went on to say that...
drama. But in the Renaissance England Christopher Marlowe among the UniversityWits introduced comic relief through the presentation of crude scenes in...
director, Melissa Steyn, is the editor-in-chief. "Wits Centre for Diversity Studies - WitsUniversity". www.wits.ac.za. Retrieved 2020-05-12. "SELF-REVIEW PORTFOLIO"...
"enthusiasts", which in the context of the time meant religious fanatics. Universitywits styled them the "Holy Club", a title of derision. Currents of opposition...
December 2011 WitsUniversity Faculty of Humanities Archived 2011-12-04 at the Wayback Machine, Contact Us, retrieved 12 December 2011 WitsUniversity Faculty...
plays he produced was The Wits (1661), with Thomas Betterton in the lead role and Hester Davenport as Lady Ample. The Wits was republished in 1665, in...
Tongue; a.k.a. Lexicon Balatronicum, A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, UniversityWit and Pickpocket Eloquence. Pall-Mall, London. Benjamin P. Eldridge and...
Global Information
