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The University Wits is a phrase used to name a group of late 16th-century English playwrights and pamphleteers who were educated at the universities (Oxford or Cambridge) and who became popular secular writers.
Prominent members of this group were Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe from Cambridge, and John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele from Oxford. Thomas Kyd is also sometimes included in the group, though he was not from any of the aforementioned universities.
This various and talented loose association of London writers and dramatists set the phase for the theatrical Renaissance of Elizabethan England. They are specified as among the earliest professional writers in English and prepared the way for the writings of William Shakespeare, who was born just two months after Marlowe.
The term "University Wits" was not used in their lifetime but was coined by George Saintsbury, a 19th-century journalist and author. Saintsbury argues that the "rising sap" of dramatic creativity in the 1580s showed itself in two separate "branches of the national tree."
They have common characteristics too:
There was a fondness for heroic themes.
Heroic themes needed heroic treatment: great fullness and variety; splendid explanations, long swelling speeches, and the treatment of violent incidents and emotions. These qualities, excellent when held in restriction, only too often led to loudness and disorder.
The style was also ‘heroic’. The chief aim was to achieve strong and sounding lines, magnificent epithets, and powerful declamation. This again led to abuse and mere rhetoric, mouthing, and in the worst cases nonsense. In the best examples, such as in Marlowe, the result is quite impressive.
The themes were usually tragic, for the dramatists were as a rule too much in earnest to give heed to what was considered to be the lower species of comedy.
We know these writers are good but this term and the privilege is given to them just because they studied at good universities isn't really a good criterion, especially when we have writers with very low educational qualifications such as William Shakespeare. After all rather than where you studied, all that matters is what you studied and how you applied it to your works.