University Wits

             

Paper Name    :-  Renaissance Literature

Topic                 :-  " University Wits''

Name               :-  Avani N. Dave

Roll No.            :-  2

Semester          :- M.A 1

Date                   :-  17/10/12

Year                   :-  2012-2013

Submitted to   :- Dr. Dilip Barad

                                Prof. & Head,

                                Department of English,

                                Bhavnagar University

University Wits :-

Ø Introduction :-

                           Because of the establishment of theatres there came competition in the production of drama. Novelty in drama is always needed for success. The managers were finding such men who could patch up old plays with new matters. At the end of the 16^th century, there was a group of men who studied at oxford or Cambridge. They revised the old drama and wrote many new plays. Comedies came into existence. Tragedy began to take shape. Plot and characterisation were developed. They were Marlow, Kyd, Greene, Nash, Lyly, Peele, and Lodge So They were known as university wits because they were scholars. They brought many changes in the field of drama. They were seven in a group. So they are known as “The seven Stars of the Cosmos.”

Ø  Contribution :-

Ø     They brought many changes in mistry and morality plays

Ø      Because of them comedies came into existence. Nicholas

 Udall wrote the first comedy ‘Ralph Roister Doister’.

Ø     They gave a new shape to tragedy.

Ø     Their plots were loose but they were first to think about

 plot because of them.

Ø    They developed the art of characterization. Characters

 become more real.

Ø   They were interested in great heroic theme.

  

Ø     Heroic theme needs a heroic treatment. So they gave a

 heroic treatment to drama such as gratefulness, variety,

 splendid descriptions and long attractive speeches.

Ø    Their comedies lacked humour. There was coarse and

 immature humour later.

ØThey often worked together as Marlowe worked with

Fletcher.

Ø  They wrote the plays and also acted in the plays.

Ø  Some of them (Lyly and Peele) made drama poetic.

Ø   They chose to write for the public stage, taking over   native traditions.

Ø They brought new coherence in structure, and real wit  and poetic power to the language.

Ø   The decade of the 1590s, just before Shakespeare started

 his career, saw a radical transformation in popular   

 drama.

Ø They transformed the native interlude a short, simple

   dramatic entertainment and chronicle play into a

   potentially great drama by writing plays of quality and

   diversity.

Ø      Thus in the words of Allardyce Nicoll, 
 ‘‘they  laid a sure basis for                            English Theatre.’’

 Personl Contribution :-

  

(1)          John Lyly (1554-1606):-

                          His plays contain attractive lyrics. The first dramatist to write essentially high comedy. His plays are extremely witty in character. It foretold the kind of literature that would be coming from the University Wits for the next decade.  His name is also attached to a series of Court plays performed by the children’s companies throughout the ’80s.

Wyatt and Collins said:

‘‘Lyly’s greatest service to drama consists in his writing plays in prose. Lyly’s sparkling dialogues gave Shakespeare an excellent model to follow.”

His best plays are:

    1.   A lexander and campase.

    2.   Midas.

    3.   Enimion.

    4.   Sapho and Phao.

(2)          George Peele (1558-1597) :-

                   He is noted for his poetic Style and decorative phrases. His contributions are flowery. He made no original contribution to drama. He was a graduate   of Christ Church College Oxford. At a point he broke with his earlier career as a Wit, providing official encomia and writing and directing pageants for the City and his alma mater.  He’s credited with writing the only play to be identified with the first Blackfriars Theater - The Arraignment of Paris in 1581, while suggestions that he was the author of the various other plays claimed for him are too uncertain to take on faith.

His main plays are:

   1.   The Araygnement of Paris.

   2.   The Famous Chronicle of king Edward – I.

   3.   The old wives’ Tale.

   4.   The love of king Dacid and Bathsheba.

(3)        Robert Greene (1558- 1592):-

                          He is Powerful for Romantic setting. He made  notable contribution in plot Construction and characterization. He gave excellent Portraits of women. He was a poet, pamphleteer, proto-novelist and playwright.  Though not the first to appear in print- his first pamphlet, Mamillia, was registered with the Stationers in 1580, the year after John Lyly’s Euphues-but he was the most prolific: 20 works published over the next 12 years.

His main plays are:

    1.   The chemical history of alphonsus king of Aragon.

    2.   A looking glass for London and England.

    3.   Friar Bacon and friar Bungay.

    4.   The history of Orlando Furioso.

    5.   The Scottish for a romantic setting.

(4)        Thomas Nash (1567- 1601):-

                        He made notable contribution to comedy. His comedies  attack so many current abuses in the state.  He and Greene should be credited with launching the English periodical press as a viable industry.

He wrote,

1.   Unfortunate Traveller.

2.   The Terrors of the Night.

3.   Summers Last, will and Testament.

4.   The Isle of Dogs.

5.   The Anatomy of absurdity

6.   Have With you to Saffron-Walden

(5) Thomas Lodge (1558- 1625):-

                              He was popular for   Romance  Exa. Rosalynde connects with this group through all three factors: time, location, and works.  Educated at the  Merchant Taylor's School during the period when the students occasionally performed at Court, then at Oxford during the period that John Lyly and George Peele were attending. did produce one work that was later turned into a masterpiece

He wrote,

   1.   Rosalynde.

   2.   Euphues Golden Legacie.

   3.   An Alarum against Usurers.

   4.   Scillaes Metamorphosis.

   5.   In A Fig for Momus.

(6)  Thomas Kyd (1558- 1994):

                              He brought the Senecan taste of horror ghost, hanging, stabbing, madness , pistolling and suicide. He influenced Shakespeare also. His authorship of the groundbreaking play The Spanish Tragedy is based on nothing more than three words by Meres and a passing mention by Thomas Heywood 30 years later, which, if nothing else, has made him a favorite with scholars as the purported author of dozens of anonymous works including the mythical-Hamlet.  Arrested by Cecil’s agents in May 1593, Kyd was imprisoned and racked into turning state’s evidence against Marlowe.  Though released following Marlowe’s assassination, he died the following year, shortly after the murder of their patron, Lord Strange.

His plays are:

   1.   Spanish Tragedy.

   2.   Householder's Philosophy.

(7)  Christopher Marlowe (1564- 1593):-

                      He reflected the renaissance spirit of freedom and individualism.He made heroic theme popular. Exa. Tamburlaine. He gave life and reality to his Characters. “Characters in the hand of Marlowe were no longer puppets pulled by a string but living and breathing realities.” He made improvement in the field of tragedy. He brought passion, vehemence and force. GHe added poetic grandeur and poetic excellence to drama.

The most popular university wit has written:-

         1   Tamburlaine.

         2   The Jew of Malta.

         3   Doctor Faustus.

         4   Edwars- II

vConclusion :-

                             As a group, then, these contemporaries illustrate well the possible attitudes of an educated man of theirtime toward the drama. Midway between Lyly and his successful practice of the drama, which for the mostcultivated men and women of his day, maintained and developed standards supplied to him, at least inpart, by his university, and Thomas Lodge, who put the drama aside as beneath a cultivated man ofmanifold activities, stand Nashe, Peele and Greene. Nashe, feeling the attraction of a popular and financially alluring form, shows no special fitness for it, is never really at home in it and gives it relativelylittle attention. Peele, properly endowed for his best expression in another field, spends his strength in thedrama because, at the time, it is the easiest source of revenue, and turns from the drama of the cultivatedto the drama of the less cultivated or the uncultivated. Greene, from the first, is the facile, adaptivepurveyor of wares to which he is helped by his university experience, but to which he gives a highly popular presentation. Passing through the hands ofLyly, Greene and even Peele, it comes to Shakespeare something quite different from what it was beforethey wrote.University-bred one and all, these five men were proud of their breeding. They were always ready to take arms against theunwarranted assumption, as it seemed to them, of certain dramatists who lacked this university training,and to confuse them by the sallies of their wit. One and all, they demonstrated their right to the titlebestowed upon them—“university wits.”