UNIVERSITY WITS – Transitory Playwrights Who Set Preclude to Realistic Literature in Elizabethan Age

Abstract

‘University Wits’ is a title given to a group of writers of the late 16^th Century England by a 19^th Century Scholar named George Saintsbury. These writers were educated either from Oxford or Cambridge Universities and wrote plays to earn their livelihood. In spite of the fact that these writers wrote without any patronage and had led short and stormy life, their importance in the history of English literature is due to their outstanding contribution towards the transformation of the theme of literature that was limited to puritanistic and moralistic writing to a more realistic yet didactic, heroic yet based on the real life problems of the everyday lives of individuals.

This essay tries to explore the works which not only enriched the English Literature through their plays with varied themes such as revenge, passion, comedy, historical and tragedy, imaginative and romantic prose but also helped in raising the standards of literature by improving the coherence of language and structure of plot construction through their literary works, as well as setting a preclude for the writers of the later ages of the English Literature.

Keywords: University Wits, Elizabethan era, revenge and passion plays, transitory playwrights, heroic tragedies.