J] the University 3 Wits

J] The University 3 wits

hristopher Marlowe is often called a university wit, one of a group of writers who were educated at Oxford or Cambridge. The writings of the university men are supposed to be characterized by classical quotations, mytho- logical and theological allusions, and a formal style in contra- distinction to the supposed common touch of writers like Wil- liam Shakespeare, Benlonson and George Chapman. The distinction breaks down in practice as no writer was more classical than George Chapman, and if the criteria are applied to the writings of Shakespeare, we are led to conclude that many of his plays show all the traits attributed to the university wits. The distinction also fails to account for important writers with an academic background who did not attend the university, men like Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleiglu and Sir Philip Sidney. The university wits were writers drawn largely from the University of Cambridge who, beginning about the year 1578, worked to raise the English language to the level of refine- ment admired in classical Latin and Greek and in contempo- rary Italian. Examples of the power and beauty of which English was capable already existed in the poetry of Chaucer, 64e Louis Ule

Wyatt and Surrey. In contra-distinction to languages like Latiry where the position of a word in a sentence had little bearing on its meaning, word order in English created as great a variety of meanings as might the order of letters in a word. With English one could construct subtle and powerful poetry with words of but one syllable, as Surrey was fond of doing, and easily accomodate the requirements of meter and rhyme. The tongue owed no small measure of its power and flexibility to the environment in which it developed: the professions, the myriad crafts, the commerce of land and of sea, the art of war and of goverrunent, and the numerous interests of a vigorous people in a rich land. The attendance of the so-called university wits at Cam- bridge, and to a lesser extent at Oxford, covered a relatively short span of years and reached its peak about the year 1581. In this year Robert Greene, John Harington, Christopher Mar- lowe and Thomas Nashe were students, and Gabriel Harvey was still a Cambridge don. The University period reached its climax in February 1587 when Sir Philip Sidney (knighted in 1583), mortally wounded in battle at Zutphen, was buried with impressive ceremony at St. Paul's, London. Marlowe, then left Cambridge without taking his degree, and Nashe followed a year later. In L587 also, at the culmination of this academic ferment, the English language, on the wings of Mar- lowe's muse, soared to the highest reaches of human wit in the following passage fuom Tamburlaine:

If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds and muses on admired themes: If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein as in a mirror we perceive The highest reaches of human wit: If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought one grace, one wonder at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest! Christoph e r Marlowe (L564=1. 607 ) e65

The greatest of the university wits was Christopher Mar- lowe himself, admired by Gabriel Harvey as'the highest mind on Paul's,'and by Greene as an excellent wit. Tamburlaine was his first known compositiorL and he had thereafter only to keep the lofty pitch of that first promise. But it is unlikely that Tamburlaine was Marlowe's first literary creation. As has been showru his earlier compositions were such works as the anon- ymous Famous Victories and Woodstock. ln his development Marlowe adopted as his own the best of what he admired in others: the blank verse of Surrey, Sir Philip Sidney's ideas on drama and poetry, and much material from Holinshed's Chronicles. Other borrowings appear to be no more than a salute to a fellow poet read in manuscript: a line from Spens- er's Faerie Queene, or an episode from |ohn Harington's trans- lation of Orlando Furioso. The university wits differed greatly in background, temper- ament, social standing, and as far as we can judge, in appearance. Jbhn Harington was a protege of Queen Elizabeth and of Lord Burghley.her chief councillor. Harington's father had devoted himself to the service of the Princess Elizabeth and married one of her gentlewomen-all three were imprisoned in the Tower and Elizabeth, on ascending the throne, repaid the elder Harington's service by acting as godmother to his son John. John Harington began his education at Eton and continued on at King's College, Cambridge. Burghley took a personal interest in the boy's education and wrote him from Court in 1578: "I thank you, my good ]ack, for your letters, which I like not for the praise they give me, but for the promise they make me" At Cambridge Harington seems to have enjoyed school per- formances of plays. He later wrote:

And for tragedies, to omit other famous tragedies, that that was played at St. Johns in Cambridge, of Richard 1//, would move (I think) Phalaris the tyrant, and terrify all tyrannous minded men from following their foolish ambitious humors, seeing how his ambition made him kill his brother, his neph- ews, his wife, besides infinite others, and, last of all, after a short and troublesome reign, to end his miserable life, and to have his body harried after his death. Theru for comedies, how full of harmless mirth is our Cambridge Pedantius?" 66ry Louis Ule

Harington mentions the play Pedantius again as a "pret$z conceit of our Cambridge comedy Pedantius (at which I re- member the noble Earl of Essex that now is, was present)." The play Pedantius was written by Doctor Gabriel Harvey's rival, Master Winkfield, and is a take-off on Harvey himself. Nashe writes of

...that exquisite comedy in Trinity College, where, under the chief part from which it took his [Gabriel Harvey's] name, as namely the concise and firking finicaldo fine schoolmaster, he was full drawn and delineated from the sole of the foot to the crown of his head. The just manner of his phrase in his orations and disputations they stuffed his mouth with, and no buffian- ism throughout his whole books but they bolstered out his part with; I leave out half; not the carrying up of his gowry his nice gait on his pantoffles, or the affected accent of his speech, but they impersonated. And if I should reveal all, I think they borrowed his gown to play the part iru the more to flout him.

Nashe then tells of two other plays, not mentioned by Har- ingtor; in which all three of the Harvey brothers were lam- Pooned:

...there was a show made at Clare Hall of him and his two brothers, called Tanarantantara turba tumultuosa Trigonum, Tri- Haraeyorum, Tri-harmonia. Lel him [Harvey] deny that there was another show made of the little minnow his Brother, Do- drans Dick at Peter House called Duns Furens, Dick Harvey in a frenzy. Whereupon Dick came and broke the college glass windows; and Doctor Perne (being then either for himself or Deputy Vice-chancellor) caused him to be fetched in and set in the stocks till the show was ended, and a great part of the night after.

Haringtory for all his interest in the drama, was not himself a playwright. His participation in the plays at Cambridge was perhaps that of a stage keeper, for he later wrote about

...our stage keepers in Cambridge, that for fear lest they should want company to see their comedies, go up and down with vizors and lights, puffing and thrusting and keeping out Christopher Marlowe (1.564-1607 ) e67

all men so precisely till all the town is drawn by this revel to the place; and at last, tag and rag freshmen and subsizars, and all be packed together so thick as now is scant left room for the prologue to come upon the stage.

At Court Harington amused the ladies with translations of ribald passages from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and in reproof the Queen charged him with the task of translating aII33,000 lines of the Italian epic. An irrepressible Elizabethan, Haring- ton went on to invent the self-flushing water closet and in- stalled one in the powder room of the Queen's palace at Richmond. He published the plans with a bill of materials, material costs and instructions for its fabricatioru but his overly-enthusiastic discourse on the merits of his invention in The Metamorphosis of A-lax incurred the Queen s displeasure. Harington's writings are also a source of information on plays performed at Coufl and on court masques during the reign of King |ames L His witty epigrams which passed from hand to hand are, as was the fashion, pseudonymous gossip in verse form. Ma.y of the pseudonyms in these epigrams can still be identified, such as Faustus with Marlowe and Linus with Nashe. Occasionally the names are given explicitly. Thomas Nashe's own account of his origins reads like the beginning of ]oyce's Finnegan's Wake:

The floud Waveny, running through many Townes of hie Suffolke up to Bungey, and from thence incroaching neerer and neerer to the sea, with his twining and winding it cuts out an Iland of some amplitude, named Lovingland. The head Towne in that Iland is Leystofe, in which bee it knowne to all men I was borne, though my father sprange from the Nashes of Herefordshire.

Nashe's father was a minister, but probably not the vicar of Lowestoft. The family was poor, and thougli Nashe matric- ulated as a sizar at St. john's, Cambridge, he showed great oromise and soon attained a scholarship. Had he had a mind io, h" might have become a fellow of tlie College he tells us, but Nashe's nafural exuberance precluded such a pedantic fate. Nashe's barber at Cambridge was one Richard Lichfield, who in later years provided posterity with the only picture we have of Nashe (illustrated). 589 Louis UIe

his - In parnphlet, The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Nashe is shown in chains but in spite of ihis and a new-grown mus- tache he appears as youthful and undaunted as"ever. Robert Greene addressed Nashe as "sweet boy", and Francis Meres called him "sweet Tom" and Linus (flaien-haired). Nashe became a gre-at- satirist a master of invective in the English lan- gaage, and for this he was also known as Juvenal after the Roman satirist, a name that appropriately connoted his boy- ish appearance. Regarding his stay at the University, Nashe has this to say:

...St. John's...in Cambridge, in which house once I took up my inn for seven year together lacking a quarter, and yet love it still, for it is and ever was the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all that University....that most famous and fortunate nurse of all learning, Saint John's in Cambridge, that at that time was an University within itself, shining so far above all other houseg halls and hospitals whatsoever, that no college in the town was able to compare with the tithe of her students; having (as I have heard grave men of credit report) more candles light in it every winter morning before four of the clock, than the four of the clock bell gave strokes; till she (I say) as a pitying mother, put to her helping hand, and senf from her fruitful womb, sufficient scholars, both to support her own weal, as also to supply all other inferior foundations' defects, and namely, that royal erection of Trinity College, which the University orator, in an epistle to the Duke of Somerset, aptly termed Colonia deducta from the suburbs of Saint john's.

Thomas Nashe is the only known collaborator with Christo- pher Ma-rlowe, this in the 'flay, Dido, Queen of Carthage, which is thought to have been written at Cambridge. In London he also collaborated with Robert Greene in the writing of a play or tw9, b_ut in spite of this, the only play to proce-ed whblly from his hand, WiU summers' Last Wilt ina T-estament, shows little skill in dramatic construction. It may be that Nashe's collaborative efforts were limited to transcribing a smooth copy from the author's marked up original and preparing it i6r the press. A finishing touch ^of tnir nature #p6u.r ii Marlowe's Dido, where Nashe, contrary to the practiie of the time, provided a list of the dramntis peVsonae. Nashe was involved in a prolonged literary duel with Ga- briel Harvey (see illustration). Gabriel Harvey, the eldest son Christopher Marlouse (1 5 64-1. 607 ) e59 of a prosperous ropemaker from Saffron-Waldery was a fellow at Pembroke Hall" Cambridge. Harvey's principal interest seems to have been English poetry and, though no poet himself, he was capable of recognizing talent in others. He encouraged the poet Edmund Spenser, then a poor sizar from London, in his poetic career. Harvey tried to impose inept classical meters on English verse, and later claimed to be the inventor of the English hexameter, a contention that invited ridicule. Somehow Harvey seems to have been unpopular for when, tn 1578, his fellowship at Pembroke Hall expired he failed to have it renewed even with the intercession of the Earl of Leicester. In 1578 the Queen visited the Earl of Oxford at Audley End not far from Cambridge, and Gabriel Harvey, having penned some Latin verses for the occasior; was made a member of a deputation from Cambridge sent to honor the Queen. Harvey delivered his verses to her in persory and there he met young Philip Sidney, who was in attendance on the Queen. Like most men his age that met the young courtier, Harvey was very much taken with Sidney, composed some verses in his praise, and introduced him to his protege, Edmund Spenser. From this date Sidney, Spenser, Harvey, and Edward Dyer were members of an informal literary circle devoted to the cause of English poetry. They would send copies of their poems to each other, and even Christopher Marlowe later was able to borrow material from the unpublished manuscript of Spenser's Faerie Queen.ln'1,579, Spenser composed and had published the first considerable poetic work in the reign of Elizabeth, The Shepherd's Calendar, which he dedicated to his friend Philip Sidney. In this poem his mentor, Gabriel Harvey, is the character Hobbinol. Unable to find more suitable employment after the loss of his Pembroke fellowship, Harvey next became a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied civil law and became a civilian or Doctor of Civil Law. English poetry never- theless remained his main interest, and in L579 he sent some of his verses to the press. When the Earl of Oxford took of- fense at one of Harvey's satires, which appeared to be directed at an Italianate gentleman like himself, Harvey disclaimed responsibility and laid the blame on Spenser. Il was a trait of Gabriel Harvey that he could not praise the work of other men unless they were of his own school or 70ry Louis UIe were of noble birth. Christopher Marlowe, in particular, was a thorn in his side, a poet of surpassing gifts whom he could only admire, though grudginglp who would not be his sub- servient disciple, yet who treated him courteously. Marlowe saw in Harvey a fellow enthusiast, may have plied him with manuscripts for his appraisal, and told him of his plans for literary work. In an Iron Age there was hardly anyone else he could talk to. Harvey could neither develop an affection for Marlowe, nor did he return his courtesy with envious censure until he thought him safely dead. Harvey's youngest brother, Richard, spent his last year at Cambridge in Marlowe's first year there, and Richard Har- vey's Lamb of God shows that he was reading the same books in the library that Marlowe was. Since access to library books was limited, Marlowe and Richard Harvey very likely met each other. Marlowe, on these encounters with Richard Har- vey, seems to have found him insufferable, for he later said of him "that he was an ass, good for nothing but to preach of the Iron Age." Another university wit, Robert Greene, was a sizar at St. ]ohn's College Cambridge, leaving the University about the time that Nashe entered. Greene took pride in his scholarship and later in London he continued to dress as a scholar, and even went on to receive Master's degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. Where Nashe, the son of a preacher, would pretend some acquaintance with divinity, Greene, after a brief and dissolute sojourn in Italy and Spain, made repentance his metier. One of Greene's first compositions was a ballad enti- tled "Youth seeing all his ways so troublesome, abandoning virtue and leaning to vice, recalleth his former follies with an inward repentance." As one might expect, a ballad with this title would sell very well and thereafter "gladwas the printer that might be so blest to pay him [Greene] dear for the very dregs of his wit," as Nashe relates. Greene then moved to London and there supported himself by writing romances, repentance pieces, and lurid exposes of supposed usury, cheating at cards, and other shady practices. He was then the most productive and popular writer in Londoru the first literary hack to thrive upon the public's insatiable thirst for printed matter and the printer's recently acquired capacity to supply it. ]ohn Marlowe himself was one of Greene's readers, and probably met him on occasion. Christopher Marloute (1.564-1607 ) c /l

In appearance Greene was scholarlike and really looked like he might be a Master of Arts of both universities. His face was amiable, Chettle tells us, his body well proportioned, his habit that of a gentleman scholar, his hair somewhat too long. Over a cloak of grave goose-turd green he sported a jolly long red beard, peaked like the spire of a steeple whereat a man might hang a jewel, it was so sharp and pendant. He was content if he had enough in his purse to conjure up a good cup of wine, and this worldly indifference extended even to his reputatiort for he did not seek to win credit by his works. It was only because his name helped to sell books and not because of vanity that hardly a trifle of his was published anonymously. Greene was known as a good fellow who was at home with all classes. In London he could discourse on religion with Marlowe, carouse about town with either him or with Nashe, or mingle with the city's underworld. He was a sentimental man, as easily persuaded one day to atheism by Marlowe's logic as to repentance by a chance sermon on another. As a writer Greene was a master of his craft. He began by' adoptingadootine the affected stylestvle of JohnTohn Lvlv'sLyly's Euahues.Euphues, but affectation was so far from his nature that he soon relapsedrela' into a more natural style. He aimed to please the reader by combining pleasantry with spiritual profit. His works are dis- tinguished by good taste and a certain charm. In poetry he lacked the discipline to follow classical measures, but instead varied the meter and the numbers to fit his thought. Typical of his limpid unaffected verse are the following:

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crowrL Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent

and:

Ah, what is love? It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king

Of the Elizabethans, we find only Greene writing a lullaby: 72C Louis Ule

Weep not my wantory smile upon my knee, When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.

Greene's weaknesses were wine and a pretty face. After his wife, the daughter of a gentleman in Noiwich, had bore him a son, he deserted them both to be with his mistress in Lon- don. Love of Rhenish wine slackened his Muse and his indus- try, atd as his fortunes declined he traded on his reputation to write plays for the stage. Althotightambridge pioduced more writers that were bet- ter knowru Oxford gave birth to a method of writing that was more widely admired and copied. This method was exempli- fied in folui Lyly's Euphues, ihe Anatomy of Wit published in 1579,9nd it may be that John Lyly was influenced in writing it by his association with Harvey and Spenser while at Cam- bridge. Spenser himself had adopted an archaic style that gave his poetry an exotic quality, 6ut did not set any iashion. Lyly, the son of a noted grammarian from Canterbury, re- duced style to a formula that might guide the uncertain writer much as rules of grammar. Sentences were to be balanced whether the thouglit required it or not, and were further orna- mented with antithesis, alliteration, and leamed quotations. That ladies at Court as well as students at the universities affected Euphuism, as this style is called, testifies to the admi- ration in wfuch it was held. Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe became Euphues' apes early in their careers, and occasionally 'Thomas' thereafter. Lodgd wrote the roman ce, Rosalyndt, Euphues Golden Legncie, which became the plot for Shake- ,speare's As You Like lt. For the fledgling writer, Euphuism had one advantage: it told him how to *rite, howevir mis- guidedly,,and to produce by formula a disciplined prose bris- tling with borrowed omament. Practice more than any formul4 however, is what develops a writer, and practice iir writing is what Euphuistic enthusiasm engendered. Samuel Daniel who attended Oxford briefly might also be included among the university wits, thouglu as he said, his best school was Wilton House, the residence of the Earl and Countess of Pembroke in Wiltshire. His mentor in this school, as well as patrory was a womary the Countess of Pembroke. The reasory perhaps, that Daniel left Oxford without a degree was to take a position in the service of the Countess; at least that is what seems to be implied in Daniel's later statement to her son William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke: Ch:ristopher Msrlowe (L 5 64-1 607 ) 973

Having been first encouraged and framed thereunto [i.e., poetry] by your most worthy and honorable mother, and received the first notion for the formal ordering of those comPo- sitions at Wiltoru which I must ever acknowledge to have beene my best school...

This passage is also given as evidence that Daniel was at one time the tutor of the young Lord William Herbert' Daniel remained outside the academic mainstream until about 1592 when he received acclaim for his first published poems, Delia andThe Complaint of Rosamund,wLichwere dedi- iated to the Countess. The formal perfection of these pieces was impressive and set a new standard of polish that was to influenie the composition of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucreie.It is difficult tofind fault with Daniel's poetry, or'rather to identify the ingredient it lacked to be ialed great. It may be that Daniel, a perfectionist, filed and polishe? his lines so far as to wear down any spi-rit that mlght have dwelt there. Ben ]onson may have hit it when he called Daniel a verser but not a poet, but if so, one is still reminded ^86 of Shakespeare's Sonnet on "the proud fulI sail of his great verse." 64e Louis UIe

Wyatt and Surrey. In contra-distinction to languages like Latin, where the position of a word in a sentence had little bearing on its meaning, word order in English created as great a variety of meanings as might the order of letters in a word. With English one could construct subtle and powerful poetry with words of but one syllable, as Surrey was fond of doinp and easily accomodate the requirements of meter and rhyme. The tongue owed no small measure of its power and flexibility to the ehvironment in which it developed: the professions, the myriad crafts, the commerce of land and of sea, the art of war and of goveffinent, and the numerous interests of a vigorous people in a rich land. The attendance of the so-called university wits at Cam- bridge, and to a lesser extent at Oxford, covered a relatively short span of years and reached its peak about the year 1581.. In this year Robert Greene, John Harington, Christopher Mar- lowe and Thomas Nashe were students, and Gabriel Harvey was still a Cambridge don. The University period reached its climax in February 1587 when Sir Philip Sidney (knighted in L583), mortally wounded in battle at Zutphery was buried with impressive ceremony at St. Paul's, London. Marlowe, then leff Cambridge without taking his degree, and Nashe followed a year later. In 1587 also, at the culmination of this academic ferment, the English language, on the wings of Mar- lowe's muse, soared to the highest reaches of human wit in the following passage fuom T amburlaine:

If alt the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds and muses on admired themes: If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein as in a mirror we perceive The highest reaches of human wit: If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One though! one grace, one wonder at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest!