UNIVERSITY WIT

any of a notable group of pioneer English dramatists writing during the last 15 years of the 16th century, who transformed the native interlude and chronicle play by writing plays of quality and diversity. The University wits included Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe (all graduates of Cambridge), and Thomas Lodge and George Peele (both of Oxford). Another of the wits, though not university-trained, was Thomas Kyd. Preceded by John Lyly (an Oxford man), they prepared the way for William Shakespeare. The greatest poetic dramatist among them was Marlowe, whose handling of blank verse gave the theatre its characteristic voice for the next 50 years.