Good morning and welcome to today’s session
on the course on history of English language
and literature.
In continuation with the previous lectures
we will be situating the emergence of English
drama.
In today’s session we will take a look at
how a prelude to a certain kind of a prelude
to William Shakespeare was being framed along
with the drama of a set of people known as
the university wits.
Before that at the outside it is very important
to provide a brief overview at a quick recap
of how the English drama had been progressing
from the 11th century onwards.
We had already noted some of those things
in the previous lectures and this will also
help us situate today’s lecture in a more
historically relevant context.
As we noted in the previous sessions drama
in general emerged from the classic period
onwards but we note that with the emergence
of the Norman conquest - but we note that
with the emergence of the Norman conquest
- the influence of the classical drama, the
influence of the Greek and Roman elements
had begun to - begun to - mitigate and there
was hardly any influence left when the Norman
conquest began.
And what we have as proper English drama is
from the 11th and 12th century onwards with
a liturgical a predominant liturgical element
build into it.
So the influence as the term implies it was
mostly Biblical.
Bible was the centre and the the source of
all kinds of plot structures, stories so on
and so forth, they had a very strong didactic
element to it because as we noted the plays
were primarily staged in order to teach the
common people the nuances of the Bible, Biblical
stories, Biblical morality, so on and so forth.
So there were two kinds as we noted in the
earlier sessions there were Mysteries plays
and there were Miracle plays and the control
was entirely under the church.
Church had dictated what kinds of plays to
be staged, where to be staged, what kind of
actors to be employed, so on and so forth.
And by the 12th till the 13th century we find
that the the structure of the play, the theme
of the play it begins to move a little away
from the church.
And there is an increased secularization that
takes place and at this stage a new kind of
play emerges known as the Morality play.
This is mostly allegorical in nature, the
story line does not exactly stick to the Biblical
stories, the characters are placed as particular
kinds of virtues and vices and this also had
laid a foundational base to the emergence
of Elizabethan drama in the centuries to come.
And from there we note that by the 14thth
century and in the beginning of 15th of the
century a kind of drama known as the interlude,
they began to emerge and this is entirely
secular in nature.
This is completely divorced from the Biblical
themes of the early centuries and there are
there is no kind of adherence to Biblical
morality or biblical plot structure.
This also had seen the complete moving away
of moving away from the control of the church,
there is a set of trade guilds there is a
set of trade guilds which begin to take a
control over these dramas in terms of its
execution, in terms of the finances to be
arranged, so on and so forth.
And it is with the interludes we note that
the drama becomes secular and there is more
comedy available for popular consumption.
There are also social satires, this also means
that there
were real characters being depicted on stage
and this is in fact with the interludes we
also know that for the first time drama begins
to be staged more for the purpose of entertainment
than for didactic purposes as it used to be
in the previous centuries.
And with this Elizabethan drama and with this
the English drama begins to assume a very
distinct structure and a very distinct stature.
We find that there are theaters which come
up as physical structures to host these drama
and there are also patrons in plays who fund
and finance all of these actors, the execution,
the other arrangements to be made, so on and
so forth.
At one point after the ascension of queen
Elizabeth we begin to note that from the end
of the 16th century onwards the monarch himself
or herself begins to patronize the production
of these plays as well.
And with these elements we note that the English,
a proper English drama emerges from the 16th
century onwards particularly from the ascension
of queen Elizabeth and queen Elizabeth and
for the same reason, this drama gets designated
as Elizabethan drama also.
There are a few distinctive features of English
drama or Elizabethan drama as it comes to
be known in the later decades.
There is this this tussle between the classical
elements and the romantic elements but at
the same time we note that Elizabethan drama
is a fine blend of the classical and the romantic
Elizabethan elements put together.
The drama is more secular in nature with a
very little interference from the earlier
theological or theocentric themes and morals.
At the same time it continues to be at the
mercy of the guilds which are funding them
and also it always tries to please the monarch
wwho is in place and this is more English
as we would see in the later discussions,
the dramatic techniques that craft to drama
all of that it emerges from the 16th century
onwards though they sometimes had a little
influence of the classical elements on them,
there is a more distinctive Englishness to
the kind of drama that begins to emerge.
And another very significant fact is that
though it gets termed as English drama, the
centre of action continues to be in London
and London in fact from the 14th and 15th
centuries onward, we noted that it had begun
to emerge as the singular most province in
the space of England, this was the center
of political activity, this was the center
of all kinds of religious movements which
were taking place.
This was also where all kinds of migration
from the ruler hinterlands were happening.
London was beginning to emerge as the most
prominent center in England.
So from the 16th century we know that London
also emerges as the center of Elizabethan
drama and we do find its influence spreading
to other parts of England but throughout the
discussion of the Elizabethan drama we do
not really talk about other the other provinces
in England, the action is centered entirely
in London.
And we also note that in especially in the
discussion of university wits which we would
be taking undertaking in today’s session
we would know that any kind of participation
in the dramatic enterprise that had emerged
in the Elizabethan times could be made possible
when only when one was willing to relocate
to the city of London.
In the later years there were many other sociological
and historical studies also which emerged
to try and understand this phenomenon which
also led to the emergence of particular kinds
of cities and particular kinds of urban centers.
So with this we move on to the main element
of today’s, the main topic of today’s
discussion which is the University Wits.
Let me introduce you to the court from William
Henry Hudson’s Outline of English History.
He talks about the university wits in a very
gentle sense and says that we must think of
them mainly as a group and must be satisfied
with the general assertion that each contributed
something to the evolution of the drama into
the form in which Shakespeare was to take
it up.
Here couple of things are very important,
even when one is talking about the university
wits its important to note that their positioning
in history, their positioning in the literary
tradition is vis-a-vis the position that Shakespeare
was to occupy at a later stage.
In all dominant histories we note this very
strange kind of positioning that the university
wits occupy and many of them in fact gloss
over the contribution of the University Wits.
However in this lecture we would be taking
a very detailed look at the influence of university
Wits primarily because I consider it extremely
important to understand Shakespeare’s craft
and Shakespeare’s dramatic technique in
the later decades.
In fact many recent historians have pointed
out that the University Wits were not given
due attention by the scholars who began to
who began to institutionalize the study of
the Shakespeare from the 19th century onwards.
So of late there is a lot of attention being
given to the factors which were aiding in
the production of Shakespeare’s drama, the
factors which had helped Shakespeare to emerge
in a particular fashion during the Elizabethan
times.
As, if you remember the title of this lecture
it said “A Prelude to Shakespeare”.
So here we begin to talk about some of the
factors literary and nonliterary which had
enabled Shakespeare to emerge in the later
decades.
So at this point we do not merely gloss over
the University Wits but we begin to ask this
question ‘what was this something that led
to the evolution of drama in the later decades’.
So we need to understand who these people
collectively known as university wits were.
They were mostly playwrights, poets and pamphleteers
and they were also considered as the earliest
professional writers in London.
As we have noted earlier, it was very important
for any of / all of them to move to London
to be of any of the noticeable stature and
they were they had been recorded in the history
right from the beginning as a set of people
who paved the way for Shakespeare’s writings
and also for Shakespeare’s personality to
emerge in the dramatic scene of London.
And also a very important factor to be noted
that they were extremely popular when Shakespeare
began his career in the 1580s.
Their popularity was such that they all were
considered, they were very well known figures
in London, in the political scenario as well
as in the entertainment scenario of England
and they were also producing successful plays
and they also had a lot of connection with
the court, so in many ways they were quite
prominent figures who in fact failed to make
it really big when later the literary histories
began to be written.
And they were also educated men.
They had university education which made them
quite distinct from many of the other playwrights
of that period.
In fact all of them put together they are
also called as UniversityWwits because of
the kind of university education they received
at
Cambridge and Oxford.
Only one of them Thomas Kyd was not a university-educated
person some of which we would be taking a
look at in a later session.
And they were the literary elite of those
times, they were gentry of literature and
they also, they also there is evidence they
also often ridiculed others who had a lesser
kind of academic education and many historians
now point out that they were all strongly
influenced by the humanistic education which
also let them to move a little beyond the
influence of academic and also engage with
a certain human values in general.
And Cambridge history of English Literature
has a very interesting observation about them
that they took a lot of pride in the university
training which amounted to arrogance and however
this arrogance was considered as a quite ok
because they also contributed a lot to the
literary methods of those times.
So it was a curious combination of intellectual
arrogance plus a genuine kind of artistic
merit.
And they also had a shared history in terms
of the time, location and ideas that they
share and they were all contemporaries.
But there is a lot of evidence to show that
they had a lot of familiarity with each other.
They were known to each other but the details
of the relationship that they shared with
each other or the extent to which they collaborated
it’s not much evident but there is certainly
an evidence of some collaborative work done
which we will be taking a look at in detail
in this session.
They all had moved from different parts of
different parts of England to the city of
London to pursue literary arts, theatre and
writing.
And writing included not just the writing
of the dramatic plays.
It also included a kind of pamphleteering,
which was a prototype of journalism then.
And they all were famous and quite notorious
also at often times for their controversial
and argumentative pamphlets they had brought
forth.
The fact that makes them very distinctive
is that they deliberately chose not to pursue
an academic reputable career but they wanted
to be in London, primarily to engage with
the idea of drama and to produce drama, to
act in drama and so that kind of passionate
interest was evident throughout in the way
they lived their lives and also the way they
composed their plays.
And they were all trained, very well trained
in fact in the school of classics but they
also knew what the audience really wanted.
So they were willing to move towards free
and flexible kind of drama.
It is said about them that they breathed a
new life into classical model.
One of the recent historians Pat Rogers has
got this thing to say about them- They did
not bring to the public stage the academic
canons of play constructions - far from it.
In that sense they were quite enduring to
the common people as well because they did
not their model of drama was not restrictive
or constricted in any way but they knew how
to play to the gallery in multiple ways.
And they were one of the first set of dramatists
who knew that it was very important to respond
to the audience that the audience reception
was important in the staging of their play
and as well as in the composition.
And it’s said about them that they made
the public plays literary without making them
academic, that was a rare combination in the
mid-16th century because until then the plays
were seen as classical models or they had
to be didactic in place, a combination of
the literary, the academic and the popular
conception of play that was a very rare combination
during those times.
They also were are credited as one of those
set of people who made classical tragedy popular
and the popular tragedy unified in construction
and conscious of its aim.
So they played a very important role in laying
the foundations of Elizabethan drama and also
as we noted earlier for making it a little
easier for Shakespeare to take off from them.
So in that sense the University Wits may be
considered as a launch pad for Shakespeare’s
craft and romantic technique.
And it is also important to take a look at
what pamphleteering meant in the mid-16th
century.
Pamphlets were the equivalent of modern magazines
and they were mostly unlike the present one,
they were mostly the work of a single author
and sometimes one or two together collaborated
to bring out a single pamphlet and this was
some of the historians even considered them
as a prototype of the modern journalism because
they always responded to contemporary affairs,
political affairs and some of them, to stay
safe even restrained from even giving their
own names while voicing certain controversial
views.
The range was very broad in these pamphlets.
They included prose and poetry and there was
no particular format in which this was getting
published.
So all of these University Wits apart from
their interest in drama they also had a very
active interest in pursuing pamphleteering
and in writing in contributing to these pamphlets
and making their views known to the public
in general.
They were also more affordable to the common
people.
If you remember printing had made its way
to England in 1476 and books continued to
be as a quite and expensive affair but pamphlets
were comparatively cheaper than books.
In fact we tried to place them in scale of
publication they were somewhere in the middle
between bound books and cheap single sheets.
As an aside cheap single sheets were seen
as a forerunner of the contemporary newspaper
form.
And these were also easy to publish and produce.
They were generally produced very quickly
in short press runs.
So in general it was cheaper, it was affordable,
the mode of publication was less complicated
as well.
So who were these University Wits?
I will list down names and no particular order
but there are different ways in which these
playwrights are being talked about.
Some have arranged them in a chronological
fashion, some arranges them in in a way in
which a hierarchy is in place but in this
lecture I have taken a special care not to
arrange them in a particular fashion because
its very difficult to hierarchically place
them or to state which one was more influential
that the others.
So in no particular order there was Christopher
Marlowe, John Lyly, George Peele, Thomas Lodge,
Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe and Thomas Kyd.
These are the set of people who are generally
understood as the University Wits.
Among these only Thomas Kyd had very little
connection with the universities.
The recent historians George Saintsbury points
out that his connections with the universities
is certainly not known.
So he certainly did not go to any of the universities
like Cambridge and Oxford but he did have
a sense of education which was perhaps not
as good as the ones considered from Cambridge
and Oxford.
So there is a general assumption that Marlowe
and Lyly had a very direct influence on Shakespeare
but historians do vary on this and a detailed
analysis of some of Shakespeare’s plays
also show that all of these had one kind or
the other influence on Shakespeare.
So we will just leave it at that and we will
not pursue much on what kind of influence
each one of them had.
And if we try to differentiate them Marlowe,
Green and Nashe mainly went to Cambridge and
Lyly, Lodge and Peele were Oxford graduates.
So all of these people together after their
education had completed they had moved to
London in for pursuing a career or pursuing
a passion in drama and other related techniques
and if we note their life time we also note
that they were more or less contemporaries
with perhaps three or four years of difference
between them.
These are some of the common literary features
which allows later critic or a later historian
to put them together and this analysis is
largely drawn from Edward Albert’s critique
of the university wits.
They all had a fondness for heroic themes
in the sense that they loved to talk and write
about the lives of great figures, great kings,
great personalities, so on and so forth.
And since heroic themes require a heroic treatment
they also made sure that their plays were
full of vitality, long speeches, spectacles,
instances of violence.
But the flip side of this was that and some
of the times this over arching ambition for
heroic treatment often led to a loudness and
disorder in their themes.
But however we can certainly give them certain
allowances for them, they being the pioneers
of this kind of drama in the mid-16th century.
So any kind of heroic theme which any kind
of heroic theme which deserves a heroic treatment
also needs to be written in a heroic style.
So there were magnificent epithets, powerful
declamations, a strong and sounding lines
to make make it look all the more spectacular
but again the flip side of this was that it
also had led to an extensive kind of abuse,
bombast, mouthing and sometimes some of those
scenes even relapsed into a certain kind of
nonsense.
In spite of these their kind of drama was
very popular and the public really enjoyed
watching them and we find that in terms of
genre (throughout the writings of Elizabethan
period) throughout the writings of the university
wits we find that there is a predominance
of tragedy.
In fact comedy during those times was considered
as a lower species of drama.
If you remember all of these writers they
also had university education.
So there was still some kind of arrogance
and some kind of hierarchy about what constituted
superior art and what constituted inferior
art.
So also in general during those times, not
pertaining just to university wits, there
was a general lack of humor and whatever humour
was available was mostly coarse and immature.
And we can see that John Lyly was the only
exception, he was the only one who at least
for a while in a very minimal way encased
with a humor in a more serious sense.
Though most historians and literary critics
have glossed over the universities wits and
have not taken much care to talk about them
in individual terms, in this lecture we will
be taking a detailed look at what the contribution
of each of these dramatists were.
We begin with John Lyly maybe because he was
considered as the leader of the University
Wits.
He is also considered as the most talented
and extremely popular one among all of those
put together but at the same time recent critics
have also realised that he was the most neglected,
underappreciated and misunderstood Elizabethan
playwright.
So in that sense we do not find him occupying
any kind of stature in mainstream literary
history so much so that like Hudson they all
prefer to gloss over all of them in a single
stroke.
And as far as his literary output is concerned,
he had 7 and some of them feel 8 comedies
and they were mostly of very high stature
in the sense that most of his works Alexander,
Campaspe, Endymion, Gallathea, so on they
all had performances scheduled within the
court.
And it is said that for some of these performances
the queen herself used to be the queen herself
used to attend.
So that was the kind of stature that he enjoyed
in the Elizabethan circles during that time
and he had mostly performed for private audience
and the court.
If you remember in one of the earlier sessions
we mentioned about how there were two different
kinds of theatres that prevailed during that
time.
One were the public houses the public playhouses
which were erected outside the city of London
and there were also these private playhouses
which catered to a select wealthier and courtly
audience.
So John Lyly was a favorite of those courtly,
wealthy audience.
And he was the first one to render an intellectual
tone to comedy because otherwise comedy was
largely coarse, it was slapstick, it also
even had the risk of falling into vulgarity.
So he was the one who made use of clever repartees.
He used puns, conceits and all kinds of verbal
fireworks and he in that sense had influenced
Shakespeare a lot and some of them even felt
that John Lyly anticipated Shakespeare as
far as the history of drama is concerned.
And there is a significant prose romance work
Eupheus: The Anatomy of Wit which is credited
to John Lyly.
In fact much of his fame in the later years
rests on this single work known as Eupheus
which we will be taking a closer look at when
we begin to talk about Elizabethan prose.
And in terms of the treatment of John Lyly’s
works, it was mostly the theme of culture
and upbringing that he dealt with.
So many feel that an understanding of John
Lyly’s work is very important for us to
understand Elizabethan manners, Elizabethan
culture, etc.
And in his works he always spoke about generosity,
sacrifice, friendship over love.
In that sense thematically we find, he is
quite closer to the Shakespearean plays which
are getting produced few decades later.
In that sense Hudson also calls him as as
Shakespeare’s first master.
Here it is very important for us to note that
all of these Universities Wits even when they
we discussed even when we discuss their individual
merits they are most often discussed in connection
with Shakespeare or in terms of the influence
they had on the later works of Shakespeare.
But towards the end in fact he died poor and
bitter.
He gets neglected by the queen the reasons
for which is not really known and he is also
forgotten by his peers and his reputation
also had steadily declined it towards the
end.
In fact the last public performance of his
plays or his writings - it was seen in 1590.
He dies in 1607 and there is this 17 years
of inexplicable silence which has been a source
of historical curiosity but nothing much is
known about the reasons for his steady decline.
But the sad fact also remains that even after
his death at a much later point in the 18th
and 19th centuries when histories began to
be written in proper, his stature could not
be reinstated much, his reputation could not
be claimed back in a very different way either.
Now we come to George Peele and he was one
dramatist who knew how to handle London life
and how to translate it into his plays and
he also played along with the nationalist
sentiments.
If you remember this was also the time when
England was consolidating herself as a nation
vis-a-vis France and Spain.
There was also this time when nationalists
were running high.
So many of his plays had a reflection of those
popular sentiments of the time and he is credited
to have a handled blank verse with more ease
and variety.
What blank verse is and what details of those
are we will take a look at, at a later point.
And some of his works major works include
the Arraignment of Paris - and this was a
play which is considered to have flattered
the queen to a great extent.
And in some private circles and for some university
didactic purposes, the play is still performed.
And the other couple of satires include David
and Bethshabe, Old Wives’ Tales - and Old
Wives’ Tale is said to have inspired The
Winter’s Tale, a play by Shakespeare.
So we continued to see all of these writers
and their significance being properly flagged
and marked by how Shakespeare had to benefit
from these at a later point and he is also
said to have collaborated with Shakespeare
on his play Titus Andronicus but there is
very little evidence and most of these facts
are quite conjectural in nature as well.
And it is said that it is said that George
Peele’s Chronicle of King Edward I was also
a model for Shakespeare historical plays at
a later point.
However his most anthologized work is a is
a short work, “A Farewell to Arms” if
you if you recall this is also the title of
Hemingway’s famous novel and in fact in
this poem has been much anthologized and this
verse has been much popularized due to the
ways in which it had been structured and also
more importantly for the way in which it flatters
the queen to no extent.
If we can read out a couple of lines from
that: “Blessed be the hearts that wish my
sovereign well, cursed be the souls that think
her any wrong”.
And this was dedicated for Queen Elizabeth
and was a popular verse during those times.
It continues to be a popular one even till
date.
And in terms of his lifestyle in fact later
we begin to notice that almost all of them
had a very similar loose kind of lifestyle.
He is said to have ‘lived dangerously’
without any kind of discipline or morals in
plays and he died of Syphillis at the age
of 40.
So his literary output was very limited in
that sense.
His life and his lifestyle continues to be
of more interest than perhaps his dramatic
output put together.
Now we come to another very important figure,
Robert Greene and his life and his general
literary output is much shrouded in mystery
so much so that historians are not even able
to identify, a portrait of him though he lived
in mid-16th century.
So he was also educated at Cambridge and Oxford,
he had the potential to become a very successful
academic they used to say it seems but anyway
he preferred theatre over academics and the
general gossip about
him in the town speculated that he had abandoned
his family in a different province and he
had moved to London to pursue a career in
theatre.
And he is also said to have had a very flamboyant
personality.
And he is considered as the foremost of the
University Wits in terms of the literary output
and in terms of the colorful life that he
enjoyed during that time and he it is said
about him that ‘he was the first to publish,
remained the longest and the first to leave’.
And if you notice his active period was only
for just about a little more than 12 years
from 1580-1593.
He was a prolific writer, he produced over
20 works which are credited to his own name
and there are also a set of anonymous works
which are conjectured to be productions of
Robert Greene.
He was in that sense the Stephen king of his
day as some of the recent historians would
put it and he was also quite and notorious
in profession, in his dealings especially
in terms of his pamphlets.
He had a portrait of himself as a hack writer
but many later historians, find this claim
quite disputed and there is a lot of controversy
about that as well.
In his writings he uses a lot of historical
events and figures.
He is also the first one to have introduced
imaginary kind of situation in his place quite
remote from the reality of those times.
And some of his important works include James
IV, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Groatsworth
of Wit Bought with a million of Repentance,
we will come back to this work Groatsworth
of Wit shortly for its significance.
And in his works we noticed that there is
a mix of a variety of themes.
In that sense he was quite experimental.
He dared to mix in elements which were not
acceptable in the classical tradition and
also he dared to experiment in such a way
that he did not even know whether the audience
would accept it or not.
However we find that in his works there is
a blend of love, fairy tale, history, magic,
jokes - the kind of things that people normally
would not dare to bring in together in a single
page especially during those times.
However he said that he was very weak in creating
dramatic characters, his craft in that sense
was not very well formed.
And his prose were comparatively is considered
as the best and he also is said to have done
a lot of collaborative work.
He collaborated with Thomas Lodge another
University Wit and this is the production,
A Looking Glass for London and England.
This was also a popular satire of those times.
And Robert Greene is also noted for his connection
with Shakespeare in a very antagonistic way
though and he was 6 years Shakespeare senior
and they both are said to have lived and worked
towards a proper career in London around the
same time and he is said to have inspired
and influence Shakespeare’s plays at a later
stage however we do not have a proper evidence
in terms of the comparative dramatic output.
In fact Robert Greene is credited and more
in terms of his first mentione of Shakespeare
which is noted in 1592.
This is in his work in work named Groatsworth
of Wit - this was a pamphlet that Robert Greene
had brought about and here we find him discussing
without referring to Shakespeare’s name
about a certain character who was becoming
very popular in the dramatic scene of London
during those times.
And this is generally known referred by the
later historians as a display of Greene’s
paranoia.
He is said to have deeply resented and attacked
Shakespeare in his pamphlet.
There is only a single mention of this.
However the term ‘Shake-scene’ is historians
feel that its a mention about Shakespeare
who had arrived in London in the 1580s and
had begun to rise to prominence in the
1590s.
So in the 1592 Robert Greene makes this very
vicious mention about Shakespeare as ‘an
upstart crow beautified with our feathers
that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a
player’s hide’.
And this was extremely significant in a historical
context because people like Robert Greene
assumed that, the arrival of new playwrights
on the scene who were not part of the University
education.
They could be a threat to the survival of
the likes of University Wits.
So in that sense Robert Greene was also echoing
the sentiments perhaps all of the other educated
playwrights of the time shared.
However it is just another irony of history
that at a later time we have devoted much
of a literary history to William Shakespeare
than to Robert Greene who derided him in a
different context.
And he is also said to have lived disreputably.
That is how Pat Rogers put it.
And Edward Albert says that he lived in a
‘sink of debauchery’ and he did not enjoy
much of a good reputation, that is what we
recover from the current records.
He is not said to have enjoyed much of a reputation
during his life time.
But about his death also its much shrouded
in history.
He is said to have ‘disappeared’ at the
age of 34 in the sense there are no the death
records available of Robert Greene.
We only hear about - in fact even his mention
of Shakespeare in 1592 in one of his pamphlets,
that was one of his last public appearance
so to speak.
after that we do not hear much about him and
he is said to have dead and rather mysteriously
disappeared.
There is still a lot of controversies and
la ot of theories about that.
So with that we move to the next person in
line, Thomas Nashe.
Thomas Nashe was educated at Cambridge, he
reached London in 1586.
He is said to be a born journalist.
He was very active in pamphleteering, in fact
perhaps the most active of all the University
Wits put together.
His work, The Unfortunate Traveller – it
is considered as the forerunner of the contemporary
novel form.
And as far as his dramatic output is considered
there are many plays that are attributed to
him but there is very little evidence to prove
whether he actually wrote them or not.
So in that sense his only surviving play is
Summers Last Will and Testament which was
produced in 1592 and he was quite familiar
with the other university wits of those times.
He is said to have been close friends with
Robert Greene, he collaborated with Marlowe
in dramatic enterprises as well as in certain
political affairs and in fact Greene and Nashe
together Robert Greene and Nashe together
they are credited with this rare distinction
of launching the English periodical press.
It was in fact only from the mid-16th century
that England began to discover a market for
a kind of new kind of journalism, a kind of
serial writing.
It’s said that the people used to look forward
to the next piece of writing which was getting
serialized there.
So in that sense they were pioneers of not
just the dramatic component but more of a
journalistic pamphleteering kind of writing.
And one thing which makes Thomas Nashe quite
distinctive is the fact that he shared a patron
with Shakespeare.
The earl of Southampton was Shakespeare’s
patron about whom we would be talking about
a little later.
And Nashe is also said to have helped Shakespeare
with Henry IV part I and some historians even
believed that Nashe wrote most of it.
However he entire play is in the contemporary
credited to William Shakespeare alone.
And as we mentioned earlier he was said to
have collaborated with Marlowe not just in
dramatic affairs but also he led a very controversial
political life, he was imprisoned for a short
period after the production of his satire
Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem.
There is still a lot of debate over whether
he actually had written it or not.
However he was prosecuted for the satirical
play along with Ben Jonson, another play writer
who said to have collaborated with him.
And due to this major political turmoils in
his life, due to such kind of unfortunate
incidents he is said to have lived in seclusion
towards the end of his age and he dies at
a very young age of
34.
And this is another notable fact during this
time, there was also this risk of inviting
the displeasure of authorities if one spoke
about any controversial political decision
of those times.
And though the Elizabethan scene was far most
secular and far more freer and far more spirited
in many ways compared to the earlier times,
we do notice that the artists’ life continued
to be at a risk.
There was a risk of imprisonment where and
if they had it at any point antagonized any
of those in power.
And some historians feel that this is the
reason for Shakespeare distancing himself
from the political scene of those periods.
We do find that most of Shakespeare’s play
at a later point, they are not set in London
but they are set in an imaginary location,
at a distant time and place.
So maybe you know these were the lessons that
Shakespeare began to pick up from the life
and the consequences of certain kinds of acts
in University Wits’ life.
Now we move to Thomas Lodge.
He was very influential in terms of his upbringing,
he was a son of a lord Mayor of London.
He is from London, he got educated at Oxford,
he studied law but however he does not become
a legal adviser of anything of that sort.
He comes back to London to be an actor.
He was also credited for this very voluminous
and energetic pamphleteering.
He is the one who responded quite boldly to
Stephen Gosson’s condemnation of stage plays.
This is a very important moment in history
of drama in England, we shall be discussing
this at a later point and because Stephen
Gosson had come up with a certain writing
against the stage plays and playwrights and
all kinds of people pursuing fine arts during
the Elizabethan times.
It was called the School of Abuse, - this
was in 1579 and Thomas Lodge is said to have
responded quite vehemently to it and also
had invited a lot of criticism and made a
lot of enemies in the process.
He is said to have collaborated with Shakespeare
for the writing of Henry VI.
By now we notice that most of these writers
there is a little evidence of them collaborating
with Shakespeare with some point or the other
but we are yet to ascertain how much of this
is a conjecture and how much of this is true.
His only surviving play a chronicle play The
Woundes of Civile War.
And he is not set to have been a wit popular
dramatists in terms of his writing, in terms
of his craft but he was more
famous in the London circles for his response
to Stephen Gosson.
Another significant thing that makes him important
in terms of his connection with Shakespeare
is his play Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie.
This is considered to be very close to Shakespeare’s
play of a later period, As You Like It.
His life takes a very different turn toward
the end just like the lives of most of the
university wits.
He turns to study and practice medicine from
1596 onwards and after that we do not find
any significant dramatic output from him.
He is also not active in London scene either
in terms of political pamphleteering or in
terms of any kind of public appearance.
He also there is evidence which shows he becomes
a catholic if you remember, England was primarily
a Protestant nation from the Tudor period
onwards after the after Henry VIII broke away
from the Roman Catholic church and framed
The church of England.
So being a catholic was a risky affair in
London during that time.
We find that by 1606 he is forced to flee
England fearing persecution.
He returns in 1610.
There is some letter of evidence which is
acquired by the historians - there is a letter
which he had written to the ambassador of
Paris thanking him for assuring a safe return
to England.
And he dies in 1625 and there is very little
known about his life from 1610 to 1625.
But compared to some of the other University
Wits, the positive thing is that there are
death records available which shows that he
had not really disappeared in to obscurity
but he just had withdrawn himself from all
kinds of public appearance and performances.
And to sum up in this session we took a look
at the lives of Lyly, Greene, Lodge, Nashe
and Peele and how their dramatic output was
significant in shaping the romantic drama
of the period and also in influencing Shakespeare’s
writings at a later point.
They all we noted had lived recklessly and
passionately but they were also not scared
to respond to the times.
However the consequences proved perhaps a
little more than they could handle as well.
They were all highly active figures in London,
they were very well known, very reputed and
so much so that their stature was considered
quite high during that time but at the same
time their lives in general, their dramatic
output, their influence is also shrouded in
mystery and their reputation is also, there
are multiple theories about what kind of reputation
they enjoyed in London during those times.
Some of them feel that the ill reputation
that many of them now are credited with is
the work of later historians who wanted to
somehow tor he other prioritize Shakespeare
and his works over the others.
That said and done even the little output
which is available of them there are many
cases of disputed authorship and some even
feel that they were all proxies for certain
other court writers.
So there are different theories in fact about
the life and output of the University Wits
which makes them all the more interesting
especially as they are also considered as
a prelude to the emergence of Shakespeare
and what makes them all the more important
in terms of historical details, in
terms of literary criticism in terms of the
general analysis of drama is that they had
a very profound influence on Shakespeare.
If any one does a detail analysis of Shakespeare’s
play at a later point of time, it is very
difficult to not notice the kind of influence
that University Wits had in his plot construction,
in the way he borrowed particular kinds of
theme, the way he responded to London life
so on and so forth.
So that’s all we have for today’s session
and the next session we will continue to look
at the remaining University Wits and how they
began to define and redefine the Elizabethan
dramatic scene in the mid-16th century.
Thank you for listening.
