(())THE UNIVERSITY WITS(())

(())THE UNIVERSITY WITS(())

The Pre-Shakespearean dramatists are known as the ‘University Wits’. They are so called as nearly all of them were closely associated with Oxford and Cambridge University. They were usually actors and dramatists. Their training began as actors. They revised old plays and finally became independent writers.

#JOHN_LYLY

•Lyly wrote comedies which were intended for the child actors in royal service. His charming romantic Plays are all comedies. They are- Women in the Moon, Endymion, Sappho and Phas, Alexander and Campaspe,Midas, Mother Bombie and Love’s Metamorphosis.

Lyly elaborated the romantic sentiment in his plays. He brought on the English stage the element of high comedy, full of lively wit and fantastic charm. His wit consists of puns, quibbles and a rapid exchange of repartee.

Lyly’s subjects are taken mostly from mythology and legends,foreign as well as natives. He introduces pastoral scenes to allegorize his plays. Their characters are personifications of Nature of Concord and Discord.

 He mingled the tragedy and comedy, pathos and humour in his plays. He freely blended the different segments of existence and different worlds. Human figures live and move side by side with the deities of classical mythology.

He added to English drama the feminine qualities of literature delicacy, grace, charm and subtlety.

Lyly’s sparkling dialogue gave Shakespeare an excellent model to follow and the greater dramatist is probably indebted to him for his first teaching in court style

#ROBERT_GREENE

Greene contributed greatly to the development of romantic comedy. In his plays the realism and idealism meet freely.

In characterization he makes a notable movement; in place of the stock characters of the mystery and miracle plays he introduces individual characters. He brings the suppleness and grace into his comedies. Though his style is not of outstanding merit, his humour is some what genial.

His plays are five in number. ‘Alphonsus, king of Aragon’is and imitation for Marlowe’s’ ‘Tamburline’.

‘A looking Glass for London and England’ is written with the collaboration with0Lodge. It is a mixture of elements from the Moralities and modern Elizabethan satire.

‘Orlando Furioso’is basically written after reading Sir John Harrington’s translation of Aristo.

In ‘Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay’ we have three distinct worlds mingled together-the world of magic, the world of aristocratic life, and the world of the country.

In ‘James IV’ there is also the fusion of romantic love and humour. It is not a historical play but founded on the imaginary incident in the life of the king.

#GEORGE_PEELE

His plays include-

TheAraygnement of Parisis a kind of romantic comedy.

The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First, is a rambling chronicle-play.

The old Wives’ Tale is a clever satire on the popular drama of the day.

The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabeis an interesting play.

Peele’s style can be violent to the point of absurdity; but he has his moments of real poetry; he can handle his blank verse with move ease and variety than was common at the time; he is fluent; he has humour and a fair amount of pathos. In short, he represents a great advance upon the earliest drama, and is perhaps one of the most attractive among the playwrights of the time.

#THOMAS_NASH

Nash took active parting the political affairs. He was a born journalist. He has no creditable achievement as a dramatist. He supposed to have finished Marlowe’s‘Dido’.

His only surviving play is –‘summer’s Last will and Testament’. It is a kind of satirical masque about the seasons.

#THOMAS_LODGE

His dramatic work is small in quality. He probably collaborated with Shakespeare in ‘Henry-VI’ and Greene’s – “A Looking Glass for London and England”.His only surviving play is- ‘The Wounds of Civil War’, a play of the old loose historical type dealing with Marius and Sulla.

#THOMAS_KYD

Thomas Kyd is one of the most important of University Wits. He was however influenced by Seneca.

Of his surviving plays the most important is -“The Spanish Tragedies”. As a revenge tragedy its horrific plot, involving murder, frenzy and sudden death, gave the play a great and lasting popularity. Shakespeare is much indebted for the matching of the plot of his famous Hamlet to this tragedy of Kyd. Kid’s dramatic style, though ranting, has occasional flashes of rare beauty which foreshadow the great tragical lines of Shakespeare.

Kid’s only other surviving play known as “Cornilia”(1593), a translation from the French Senecan, Garnier, but his hand has been sought in many plays including “Soliman and Perseda”the “First part of Jeronimo”, an attempt after the success of “The Spanish Tragedie”, to write an introductory play to it, and Shakespeare’s“Titus Andronicus”.

#CHRISHPER_MARLOWE

Marlowe is one of the remarkable characters of the English Renaissance, and the greatest of Shakespeare’s predecessors. He is famous for four dramas, now known as the Marlowesqueorone-man type of tragedy, each revolving about one central personality who is consumed by the lust of power.

The first of these is Tamburlaine.It is the story of Timur the Tartar. Timur begins as a shepherd chief, who first rebels and then triumphs over the Persian king. Intoxicated by his success, Timur rushes like a tempest over the whole East. Seated on his chariot drawn by captive kings, with a caged emperor before him, he boasts of his power which overrides all things. Then, afflicted with disease, he raves against the gods and would overthrow them as he has overthrown earthly rulers.

Tamburlaine is an epic rather than a drama; but one can understand its instant success with a people only half civilized, fond of military glory, and the instant adoption of its “mighty line” as the instrument of all dramatic expression.

“Dr.Faustus” is his second play. It is one of the best of Marlowe’s works. The story is that of a scholar who longs for infinite knowledge, and who turns from Theology, Philosophy, Medicine, and Law, the four sciences of the time, to the study of magic, much as a child might turn from jewels to tinsel and colored paper. In order to learn magic he sells himself to the devil, on condition that he shall have twenty-four years of absolute power and knowledge. The play is the story of those twenty-four years. Like Tamburlaine, it is lacking in dramatic construction, but has an unusual number of passages of rare poetic beauty.

Marlowe’s third play is The Jew of Malta, a study of the lust for wealth, which centers about Barabas. It is a terrible old money lender, strongly suggestive of Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. The first part of the play is well constructed, showing a decided advance, but the last parties an accumulation of melodramatic horrors. Barabas is checked in his murderous career by falling into a boiling caldron which he had prepared for another, and dies blaspheming, his only regret being that he has not done more evil in his life.

Marlowe’s last play is Edward II. It is a tragic study of a king’s weakness and misery. In point of style and dramatic construction, it is by far the best of Marlowe’s plays, and is a worthy predecessor of Shakespeare’s historical drama.

Marlowe is the only dramatist of the time who is ever compared with Shakespeare. When we remember that he died at twenty-nine, probably before Shakespeare had produced a single great play, we must wonder what he might have done had he outlived his wretched youth and become a man. Here and there his work is remarkable for its splendid imagination, for the stateliness of its verse, and for its rare bits of poetic beauty, but in dramatic instinct, in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in delineation of woman’s character, in the delicate fancy which presents an Ariel as perfectly as a Macbeth, - in a word, in all that makes a dramatic genius, Shakespeare stands alone. Marlowe simply prepared the way for the master who was to follow.

The University Wits brought English drama to the point where Shakespeare began to experiment upon it. Much of Shakespeare’s works owed in many respects to previous plays. Each of the University Wits added or emphasize same essential element which appeared later in the works of Shakespeare. Actually they created the platform from where Shakespeare started his journey.