University Wits
Anushua Chatterjee
The term “University Wits” was ascribed by a 19th century journalist and author, George Saintsbury,( in his book,The History of Elizabethan Literature)to a distinctive group of English playwrights and pamphleteers, active during the 16th century literary phenomena. These writers were—----John Lyly, George Peele,Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe. These dramatists took their formal education from the highly esteemed universities like Oxford and Cambridge and infused their learning of classical dramas and the elevated mode of expressions with the popular traditions, myths and legends, thus creating such a unique body of works that significantly mark the cultural transition of the time.
The “university wits”, being educated, ambitious and reckless bohemians, had no desire to be in holy orders, rather they bent on producing secular plays to earn their living. Therefore, they had impacted the commercialization of the Elizabethan theater, by maintaining an artistic balance between the taste of the roaring popular successes and the refinement of the sophisticated connoisseurs. This resulted in the creation of the “complex commercial” dramas of heroic themes and tales, with declarative lines, glorious epithets, and powerful declamation, that marked their proficiency in classical learning and linguistic innovation.
The literary significance of the University Wits
Their exposure to and strong grounding of classical literature and language and their resultant incorporation of classical forms, rhetoric, allusions and themes into their works made their writings an elevated, disciplined craft, distinct from their contemporary amateurs.
The university Wits shifted away from the religiously inclined medieval morality and mystery plays and introduced intricate plots, larger than life characters and the complexity of human psychology through the aspirations and vengeance of their protagonists. Their characters were often serious men with remarkable ambition for power, leading them either to political invasion and military conquest or to the practice of magic and necromancy. In this regard, their characters did resonate the mood and the spirit of Renaissance man to articulate the heresy of their non commitment to the religious and Orthodox moral straitjacketing of human potentiality.
Apart from drama, the University wits excelled in the field of prose and made their prolific output by producing a wide range of work in pamphlets and prose romances that resonate their learning of classical literature.
As far as the stylization is concerned, the University wits mark their exceptionality by using significant metaphors, allusions to classical mythologies, paradox, wordplay, double endre(a form of wordplay is employed, to convey two meanings simultaneously) etc. They often use the technique of parallel plot into their plays to enhance the complexity. The dynamic soliloquies do intensify the emotional conflict, the dilemma of the protagonist in a much more human way comparatively from the morality plays.
Literary features in common
These playwrights, though, did not collectively belong to a certain literary group, but they had several features in common. For instance, they had a shared fondness for heroic characters and their lofty deeds, which they often treated with magnificent epithets, long swelling speeches, passionate poetic articulations and violent emotional conflict. The heroism of their heroes, usually, do stem from an aspiration of power and to a certain extent of social acknowledgement, that renders a larger than life essence to their characterization. Thematically, the heroic deeds are usually tragic in nature and the use of blank verse adds elasticity to the strong pressure of the articulation of their ardent passions and the equally violent peripety following it.
Comedy is a matter of limited experimentation to them, except John Lyly whose comedies and prose style led to the emergence of both Courtly Comedies and Romantic comedies that paved the ways for the playwrights like William Shakespeare.
John Lyly
Prose Romances: John Lyly's success was founded on his two dramatic prose romances Eupheus: The Anatomy of Wit and Eupheus and His England, both of which are marked with a distinctive literary style of artificial prose that influenced a new kind of Court Comedy. This style of Lyly is known as Euphuism, named after the titular character. Euphuism adheres to classical learning, employing literary devices of antithesis, alliterations and rhetorical questions in an ornate and sophisticated manner. John Lyly’s Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit (1578) and its sequel Euphues and His England (1580) was written to provide lively court entertainment and at the same time supplying instructive lessons about friendship and love, revolving around the two friends Eupheus and Philautus’ love for Lucilla. The name of Eupheus,the Greek word meaning witty, was adapted from Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster. The proverb "All is fair in love and war" has been attributed to Lyly's Euphues. The references of this name are to be found in Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacy, Robert Greene's Menaphon, Signs of the Times, by Tomas Carlyle and Virginia Woolf referred to this novel as “The germ of the English Novel" in her The Voyage Out (1915).
Plays based on Greek mythology:
Campaspe : Also titled as A Most excellent Comedy of Alexander, Campaspe and Diogenes( as per 1584 edition), this play introduces the characters from Greek mythology and balanced it with sentiment, focusing on the rivalry in love between Alexander the Great and the painter Apelles for the Theban captive Campaspe. Lyly indebted the narrative of this play to multiple sources like Natural History of Pliny the Elder; Thomas North's 1580 translation of the Parallel Lives of Plutarch; Plato's Republic; Terence's Eunuchus; Horace's Ars poetica, Ovid's Ars amatoria etc. The character of Diogenes is sourced from the translation of Plutarch's Apopththegamata by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Thomas Nashe quotes from Campaspe in his play Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592).
Sappho and Phao: The sources of this play include the Greek legend of the romance of Sappho and Phaon, drawing on Ovid's "Letter from Sappho to Phaon", from the Heroides, and the English 1576 translation of Aelian's Varia Historia by Abraham Fleming. This play is designed as an idealized allegory of Queen Elizabeth I and the contemporary circumstances and events of the English royal court.
Endymion, the Man in the Moon : The title of Endymion has references to the mythological story, though the plot of the play seems quite deviating from it and allegorically resonating with the contemporary Court of Queen Elizabeth I. The plot of the play centers around the narrative of a young courtier, Endymion, who is sent into an endless slumber by Tellus, his former lover, because he has spurned her to worship the ageless Queen Cynthia. The comic elements are derived from both the Italian Commedia dell'arte and the classical Latin comedy of Plautus and Terence, though the prose style is marked by euphuism. As far as the influence of this play is concerned, it is assumed that this play has largely influenced Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the character of Toby Belch in Twelfth Night.
Midas : The source of this play is Ovid's Metamorphosis, Book xi, though the largely allegorical play deviates from the classical text and resonates with the contemporary politics of the time. For instance, Midas’ golden touch allegorizes the enormously wealthy Philip II of Spain, while the island of Lesbos that he aspires to conquer is England under the reign of Elizabeth I.
Pastoral plays : The pastoral allegorical plays of Lyly—-- Gallathea, Love's Metamorphosis, The Woman in the Moon are all set in an allegorical dreamland concerning nymphs, fairies, swains, soldiers,monsters, goddesses,other supernatural characters and human lovers. Gallathea is set in a village on the Lincolnshire shore of the Humber estuary, featuring the theme of cross dressing influences Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and As You Like It. The figure of the virgin queen represents Elizabeth's cultivated image also to be found in Spenser's The Faerie Queene; Love's Metamorphosis is set in Arcadia, having its sources from Ovid's Metamorphosis and Robert Greene's Metamorphosis and Alcida. The play's goddess figure, Ceres, has generally been considered as an allegorical representation of Queen Elizabeth I; The Woman in the Moon, set in Utopia, is the only play by Lyly written in blank verse. This play narrates the story of Pandora. This play is often regarded “a satire on women ''.
Realistic Comedy : Lyly’s Mother Bombie, written in the tradition of Plautus and Terence, stands apart from his other plays of classical allusion, instead it aims to focus on the "vulgar realistic play of rustic life" of the contemporary England, employing elements of farce and social realism. "Mother Bumbey" , a folklore figure in the traditional ballad literature, can also be found in Thomas Heywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon and in The Witch of Edmonton, written in collaboration by Dekker, Ford, and Rowley.
Six Court Comedies : This is the first printed collection of Lyly's plays, published by Edward Blount in 1632, the same year that he published the Second Folio of Shakespeare's plays. They appear in the volume in the following order: Endymion, Campaspe, Sapho and Phao, Gallathea, Midas and Mother Bombie, all first printed 1584-94. The last two of his plays The Woman in the Moon and Love's Metamorphosis, printed in 1597 & 1601 respectively, were omitted. The collection printed the songs in Campaspe and Gallathea for the first time.
George Peele
The Arrangement of Paris : Written as a mythological courtly pastoral play(similar to that of Lyly), The Arrangement of Paris narrates the mythological story of Paris and his judgment to give the golden apple, his love for his wife Oenone,his partiality in judgment and his eventual awarding of the golden apple to Diana. The act of Dyna's gifting the apple to
a nymph called Eliza,has the resonance of Queen Elizabeth I. The subplot concerns the love of Colin for Thestylis involving some rustic characters whose names are sourced from Spender's Shepherd's Calendar. This play is written in a wide variety of verse forms including “ fourteeners” and blank verse.
The Old Wives' Tale : The Old Wives' Tale uses the device of a play within a play when Madge, wife of Clunch began telling a story to three gay fellows, lost their way in the woods, the characters appear to act out and her story becomes the play. This play is often considered as burlesque, aimed to satirize the popular romantic dramas of the time. The introductory scene in the play is written in colloquial prose, though the main part of the play is a blend of mannered prose and blank verse.
The Battle of Alcazar : Written in the genre of historical play, this play has its primary historical source in John Polemom's The Second Part of the Book of Battles, Fought in Our Age, published in 1587. The play is based on the popular interest in the Drake-Norris Expedition of the English Armada in 1589.
Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First : This historical play chronicles the career of king Edward I and is believed to have influenced Shakespeare's historical plays.
The Love of King David and fair Bethsabe : Written in blank verse, this play dramatizes the biblical story of King David’s love for Bathsheba and Absalom's rebellion, often considered as a political satire, in which King David allegorizes Queen Elizabeth I, Bathsheba allegorizes Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's favourite English statesman and suitor and Queen Mary of Scots is symbolized as Absalom.
Other plays attributed to Peele are The Troublesome Reign of King John( believed to be the source of Shakespeare's King John), Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes , Mucedorus, Titus Andronicus (co-written with Shakespeare).
Robert Greene
Prose :
Pandosto: This prose romance, subtitled as The Triumph of Time, narrates the Bohemian king Pandosto's suspicion on his wife's affair with his childhood friend, the King of Sicilia,his out throwing of his infant daughter to sea, the death of his wife and son and finally the discovery of his daughter Fawnia, who was raised by the shepherds. This tale is believed to be the source of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, though Greene, in turn, may have based his work on The Clerk's Tale, one of The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. This romance is dedicated to Lady Hales, wife to the late deceased Sir James Hales.
Menaphon: A prose romance, telling the story of the adventures of the princess Sephestia, shipwrecked on the coast of Arcadia. Sephestia, disguised as Samela, is wooed simultaneously by her father and her teenage son, while herself carrying on a love affair with her disguised husband. Her fourth lover is the shepherd Menaphon of the title. The full title of this prose is "Menaphon - Camila's alarm to slumbering Euphues in his melancholy cell at Silexedra, etc. Slumbering Euphues refers to the work of John Lyly’s first novel Euphues, the writing style of which has been mined by Robert Greene for his Menaphon.
Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance: Written in the form of a short book or pamphlet, this book contributed to the lively intellectual life of the time as a moralistic tale, which, towards the end, is revealed to have been autobiographical. The pamphlet is most famous for a reference to William Shakespeare as "upstart crow beautified with our feathers" This work has references of Shakespeare's Henry IV, part -3, Henry VI, and Richard III. The critic Stephen Greenblatt has speculated that Greene was the model for Shakespeare's Falstaff.
Plays:
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1590):
The "Friar Bacon" of the title is Roger Bacon, the thirteenth-century polymath and a popular magician, while the second friar was Bacon's late contemporary Thomas Bungay. The primary source of the play is sixteenth-century prose romance The Famous History of Friar Bacon. But Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is believed to have influenced the text. The plot revolves around Bacon's proof of magical powers before King Henry III and the emperor of Germany, with the subplot of the love idyll between Margaret and Lacy. The play John of Bordeaux, or The Second Part of Friar Bacon is a sequel to this play.
The History of Orlando Furioso (1590):
This drama is based on Ariosto's Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso, which tells the story of the knight Orlando and his quest to win the love of the princess Angelica, but the count Sacripant, who also an admirer of Angelica for a bride, implements a slightly evil scheme which leading to the severe case of insanity in Orlando. The setting of the play changes from Africa to India. Greene also employed the technique of cross dressing in this play. Greene is believed to have borrowed some elements of this play from George Peele's The Old Wives Tale.
A Looking Glass for London and England( 1590): Written in collaboration with Thomas Lodge, this play brings back the essence of medieval morality play by narrating the biblical account of Jonah and the fall of the vicious tyrant Nineveh to repentance.
The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1590): A historical play, deriving its source from a story by the Italian author Giraldi Cinthio. The plot of the play concerns King James' love for Ida and the problems leading it. But Ida's discouragement to her royal wooer and Queen Dorothea's constancy to her erring husband brings the story to its happy ending.
The Comical History of Alphonsus, King of Aragon (1590): This play shows the partial influence of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine.
John of Bordeaux (1592): A sequel to Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.
Selimus(1594): A “turk play” , written in collaboration with Thomas Lodge, centering on Selimus, the youngest son of Bajazet's , the Emperor of Turkey, plans to take the crown away from his father.
Locrine (1594): This play dealing with the legendary Trojan founders of the nation of England and of Troynovant,the present day London, has its source from Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae and the Mirror for Magistrates.
Thomas Lodge
His prose romance Rosalynde:Euphues Golden Legacie (1590), written in the euphuistic style of Lyly, provides the source for Shakespeare's As You Like It.
His tragic play The Wounds of Civil War dramatizes the ancient Roman conflict between Marius and Sulla.
A Looking Glass for London and England( 1590): Written in collaboration with Robert Greene, this play brings back the essence of medieval morality play by narrating the biblical account of Jonah and the fall of the vicious tyrant Nineveh to repentance.
Glaucus and Scilla: An Ovidian verse fable, bearing the full title of Scillaes Metamorphosis, Enterlaced with the Unfortunate Love of Glaucus, is one of the earliest English poems to retell a classical story. This poem is the possible source of Shakespeare's long narrative poem Venus and Adonis.
Lodge’s earliest work was an anonymous pamphlet (1579) in reply to Stephen Gosson’s attack on stage plays.
Phillis (1593) contains amorous sonnets and pastoral eclogues from French and Italian originals.
A Fig for Momus (1595) introduced classical satires and verse epistles, modeled after those of Juvenal and Horace into English literature for the first time.
A Margarite of America (1596), which combines Senecan motives and Arcadian romance in an improbable love story between a Peruvian prince and a daughter of the king of Muscovy.
Lodge's moralizing pamphlets include works such as Wits Miserie, and the World's Madness (1596). His pamphlets, Wits Miserie and the Alarum are memorable for their cameos of London life.
His other notable works include A Treatise of the Plague (1603) and two major translations—The Famous and Memorable Works of Josephus (1602) and The Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
Thomas Nashe
Nashe's most important work was his picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jack Wilton (1594), considered to be the first picaresque novel in English. The book is a brutal and realistic tale of adventure through Germany and Italy of its rogue hero, Jack Wilton, after witnessing all sorts of historic events, converted to a better way of life.
His Summer's Last Will and Testament, an allegorical play about seasons, blended satire with courtly compliment.
His Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Divell (1592) is a satire focusing on the seven deadly sins.
Nashe warned his countrymen during one of the country’s worst outbreaks of bubonic plague that, unless they reformed, London would suffer the fate of Jerusalem, in his Christ's Tears over Jerusalem (1593).
A discursive,bewildering, attack on demonology can be seen in his Terrors of the Night (1594) .
In 1589 he wrote The Anatomy of Absurdity and the preface to Greene’s Menaphon. Both works are bold surveys of the contemporary state of writing.
With Ben Jonson, Nashe wrote a satirical play The Isle of Dogs (1597) which leads to their prosecution.
Conflict with Harvey : Nashe satirized Harvey and his brothers in Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell and then joined the combat in an exchange of pamphlets Strange News (1592) and Have with You to Saffron-Walden (1596) with Harvey.
Thomas Kyd
If Robert Greene is credited with the foundation of Romantic comedy, the founder of romantic tragedy can be ascribed to Thomas Kyd, for adapting the primal elements of Senecan tragedy to the roaring melodrama of love, conspiracy, murder, and revenge.
The Spanish Tragedy: Sometimes called Hieronimo is Mad Again, or Jeronimo, after its protagonist, The Spanish Tragedy initiated the genre of revenge tragedy in English theater, containing several violent murders and personifying Revenge as its own character.The characterization of Hieronimo, the protagonist (though initially seems to be a minor character) ; the technique of play-within-a-play to trap a murderer ; a ghost intent on vengeance ; the madness real and feigned; the Machiavellian malicious plotting of Lorenzo; the grave-digging of Hieronimo; and an instinctive sense of tragic situation, are believed to prepare the way for Shakespeare’s psychological study of Hamlet.
The play begins with a prologue,featuring the ghost of Andrea, a Spanish nobleman, seeking revenge and is accompanied by a spirit called Revenge (personified) who confirms vengeance to be executed on Balthazar, Portuguese Prince,at the hand of whom Andrea died, in the battle of Spain against Portugal.
Balthazar is in love with Bel-imperia,who was in love with Andrea against her family’s wishes. The royal family of Spain concludes that the marriage of Balthazar and Bel-imperia would be an admirable way to refurbish the peace-process with Portugal. Meanwhile,
the King’s nephew Lorenzo ( Bel-imperia’s brother) and Horatio(Andrea’s best friend) quarrel over who captured Balthazar,the King leaves Balthazar in Lorenzo’s custody and splits the spoils of the victory between the two. Horatio comforts Lorenzo’s sister, Bel-imperia, who despite her former feelings for Andrea, Bel-imperia soon falls for Horatio. Lorenzo, suspecting that Bel-Imperia's courtship with Horatio, persuades Balthazar to help him murder Horatio during an rendezvous with Bel-Imperia; Hieronimo, Horatio’s father,and his wife Isabella( Horatio’s mother)find the body of their son hanged and stabbed, and Isabella is driven mad.
Despite being locked by Lorenzo, Bel-imperia informs Hieronimo that Lorenzo and Balthazar are the murderers of Horatio, Hieronimo came to the King to seek justice but is detained and dissuaded by Lorenzo. This leads to the suicide of Isabella. Hieronimo, along with Bel-Imperia, feigns reconciliation with the murderers and plan to put on a play together, Soliman and Perseda, under cover of the which they stab Lorenzo and Balthazar to death in front of the King, Viceroy, and Duke of Castile (Lorenzo and Bel-Imperia’s father); Bel-Imperia kills herself, and Hieronimo bites out his own tongue to prevent himself from talking under torture, after which he kills the Duke and then himself. Andrea and Revenge are satisfied, delivering suitable eternal punishments to the guilty parties.
Influence: David Daiches pointed out that the bewitched Titania's exclamation in A Midsummer Night's Dream, “What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?” is a deliberate parody of Hieronimo’s “ What outcries pluck me from my naked bed”. Ben Jonson mentions "Hieronimo" in the Induction to his Cynthia's Revels (1600); The Alchemist (1610) has a reference to a character disguise himself in "Hieronimo's old cloak, ruff, and hat", and quotes from The Spanish Tragedy in Every Man in His Humour (1598), Act I, scene iv. Thomas Dekker, in his Satiromastix (1601), suggests that Jonson, in his early days as an actor, played Hieronimo,himself. Later, T. S. Eliot himself, quoted the title and the play in his poem The Waste Land and this play also appears in Orhan Pamuk's 2002 novel Snow.
Cornelia or Pompey the Great, his Fair Cornelia's Tragedy: An English language adaptation of Robert Garnier's play Cornélie from 1573, this play is about Cornelia Metella, the widow of Pompey. The play ends with Pompey's death and the reactions from his family. Julius Caesar does not appear in person but has a presence throughout.
Christopher Marlowe
Plays
Tamburlaine the Great: Tamburlaine, the flamboyant story of the conquering Scythian shepherd’s rise to the rank of an emperor, is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur also known as Tamerlane Or, Timur the Lame. This play, like other Marlovian plays, seems to undermine the moral considerations and exhibits the boundless human ambition and self determination by transcending all the limits. This dauntless Marlovian hero’s inordinate ambition and pride, reflects the spirit and temper of Renaissance in images of power and violence,demonstrating the potential of blank verse in drama.
The intoxication with power presupposes the central theme of the play, as he does not show much interest in the fruits of power, once achieved. His series of conquests seem to lack a material objective, so his love for Zenocrate does not lead to any serious dramatic conflict in the play as it can be witnessed in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Thus, the motto behind his obsession with and execution of power may be ascribed to a Faustian urge to overreach the farthest limits of morality that, to a large extent, restricts human potential. But, the Elizabethan audience were struck to witness how Bajazeth, the Emperor of Turks and his wife were kept in cages, like beasts, only to amuse Tamburlaine and Zenocrate; also the spectacle of violence seems terrifying when Tamburlaine's chariot was drawn by the conquered Kings like Trebizon and Soria with bites in their mouths. These physical violence executed upon the kings symbolize the quintessence of dominion that power begets and the inevitability of plight once the power is reversed.
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus: Dr. Faustus is a Tamburlaine with an intellectual ambition for ultimate knowledge that begets power to a ‘common man’ and hence begins his journey of overreaching. Marlowe dramatizes the Faust legend and recreates the story of the Fall of Man through eating of the tree of knowledge, with a significantly Christian background. The play may be read as a Renaissance man's aspirations to “ follow knowledge like a sinking star” by going beyond the conventional disciplines of Philosophy, Medicine, Law and Theology, highlighting its limitations. Faustus's aspirations to become the “demi-god” seems to question the dogmatic hierarchy of God and the limitations imposed by religion. Faustus’ despises to be a “common man”, content with the limited knowledge and praxis of the conventional disciplines and seeks to explore necromancy that offers to him a world of “ profit and delight”. The morality structure of the play is evident in the suggestions of Good Angels to “lay that damnèd book aside And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head!” and of the Evil Angels “Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art” promising the treasure of Nature. The ‘good’ angel's suggestions convince Faustus to be within the limit destined for a Man, whereas, the so-called “evil” angel motivates him to step ahead of the branches of study where knowledge is limited. Through this, Marlowe seems to question the very notion of “good” and “evil” and finally his hero chooses the “evil” to be his “good”. The spectacle of corruptio optimi pessima (the corruption of best becomes the worst) is evident when the applications of those knowledge were made to the meanest things. Faustus shows the downward trajectory of a man's ambition from a ‘demi-god’ to a court magician, who further degenerates into a prankster to trick a horse courser. His entire journey from a man, born of “parents base of stock”, to a theologist, then a seeker of limitless knowledge and finally of a wretched man”, neither can ask for God's forgiveness, nor is william to succumb into eternal damnation. Hence, we see the fall of Faustus.
Marlowe kept the interest of the masses intact, in the pageant of the seven deadly sins and the exposure of the dark ideas and black magic, which had haunted the mind of Europe through centuries. This play also highlights certain contentions whether to support or to challenge the Calvinist doctrine of absolute predestination, that is, God's acting of his own free will, in electing some people to be saved and others to be damned, leaving the individual no control over his own ultimate fate. According to this view, this play demonstrates Calvin's "three-tiered concept of causation," in which the damnation of Faustus is first willed by God, then by Satan, and finally, by himself.
The Jew of Malta: The full title of the play is The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta. This is a dramatic representation of a “Machiavellian” man, the Jewish merchant named Barabas, full of greed and cunning, plots the destruction of the Christian governor of Malta who seizes half the property of all Jews living on Malta as a tribute demanded by the Turks. When Barabas protests, his entire estate is confiscated. Seeking revenge on his enemies, he tricks the Governor's son and his friend into fighting over the affections of his daughter, Abigail. When they both die in a duel, the horrified Abigail runs away to become a Christian nun. But, Barabas goes on to poison her along with the whole of the nunnery. After that, he kills his trusted page Ithamore, who in a drunken state, with his beloved prostitute, exposes Barabas. And then Barabas plots with the enemy Turks to besiege the city. When he is finally nominated governor by the Turks, his new allies, he switches sides to the Christians once again to trap the Turks and boil them alive in cauldron,but then, the former governor double-crosses him and at the end he is betrayed and dies the death he had planned for his enemies.
Edward, the Second : The complete title of the play is The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer. Marlowe had drawn the source from Holinshed's Chronicles. The narrative of the play focuses on most of Edward II's reign, beginning with the recall of his favourite, Piers Gaveston, from exile, and ending with his son, Edward III, executing Mortimer Junior for the king's murder. The relationship between the King and Gaveston,as has been observed by Boas, elaborates, "Homosexual affection ..”, a special attraction for Marlowe.
Poetry :
Hero and Leander : Hero and Leander , an eight-hundred word narrative poem of Marlowe, is a re-telling of the Greek legend of the same name. This story was narrated by both Ovid and the Byzantine poet Musaeus Grammaticus, both of whom Marlowe read, but fundamentally he sourced from Musaeus. This poem often considered as an epyllion, that is, a "little epic", longer than a lyric or an elegy, but concerned with love rather than with traditional epic subjects, deal with the love story between Hero, a priestess of Venus and Leander, her lover, both of whom live in cities on opposite sides of the Hellespont. This poem of Marlowe was completed by George Chapman. This poem was lampooned by Ben Jonson in his comedy Bartholomew Fair. Shakespeare also quoted from this text in his comedy As You Like It.
Passionate Shepherd to His Love : This poem, which appeared in England's Helicon, begins with the remarkable line, “Come live with me and be my love”.
References:
Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, revised edition,Supernova Publishers and Distributors,Vol-1, pp. 226-245
Albert, Edward, A History of English Literature,OUP, pp. 89-94.
Britannica
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University wits | Renaissance, Christopher Marlowe & Thomas Kyd
Internet Shakespeare Editions
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The "University Wits" :: Life and Times
e-Adhyayan
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The Spanish Tragedy – English Literature upto 1590
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The Spanish Tragedy | work by Kyd
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Edward II of England
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