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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 dis- tinction 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 univer- sity 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 appear- ance. 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 prom- ise 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.
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