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Unit 5: The Renaissance-University Wits and Contribution of Shakespeare to This Age

Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious Notes
death.
A warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason for it was given, though it
was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been
written by Marlowe was said to contain “vile heretical conceipts”. On 20 May he was brought to
the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met
that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until “licensed
to the contrary.” Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing
was connected to his arrest has never been resolved.

5.2 Robert Greene

Robert Greene (11 July 1558 – 3 September 1592) was an English author best known for a posthumous
pamphlet attributed to him, Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit, widely believed to contain a polemic
attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University,
receiving a B.A. in 1580, and an M.A. in 1583 before moving to London, where he arguably became
the first professional author in England. Greene published in many genres including
autobiography, plays, and romances, while capitalizing on a scandalous reputation.

5.3 Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the
son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret. Little is known with certainty of Nashe’s
life. He was baptised in Lowestoft, Suffolk, where his father was curate. The family moved to West
Harling, near Thetford in 1573 after Nashe’s father was awarded the living there at the church of All
Saints. Around 1581 Thomas went up to St John’s College, Cambridge as a sizar, gaining his bachelor’s
degree in 1586. From references in his own polemics and those of others, he does not seem to have
proceeded Master of Arts there. Most of his biographers agree that he left his college about summer
1588, as his name appears on a list of students due to attend philosophy lectures in that year. His
reasons for leaving are unclear; his father may have died the previous year, but Richard Lichfield
maliciously reported that Nashe had fled possible expulsion for his role in Terminus et non terminus,
one of the raucous student theatricals popular at the time.

Did u know? William Covell wrote in Polimanteia that Cambridge “has been unkind to the
one to wean him before his time.” Nashe himself claimed that he could have
become a fellow had he wished.

5.4 Thomas Lodge
Thomas Lodge was an English dramatist and writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. In 1578
he entered Lincoln’s Inn, where, as in the other Inns of Court, a love of letters and a crop of debts were
common. Lodge, disregarding the wishes of his family, took up literature. When the penitent Stephen
Gosson had (in 1579) published his Schoole of Abuse, Lodge responded with Defence of Poetry,
Music and Stage Plays (1579 or 1580), which shows a certain restraint, though both forceful and
learned. The pamphlet was banned, but appears to have been circulated privately. It was answered
by Gosson in his Playes Confuted in Five Actions; and Lodge retorted with his Alarum against
Usurers (1585)—a tract for the times which may have resulted from personal experience. In the same
year he produced the first tale written by him on his own account in prose and verse, The Delectable
History of Forbonius and Prisceria, both published and reprinted with the Alarum.
From 1587 onwards he seems to have made a series of attempts at play writing, though most of those
attributed to him are mainly conjectural. He probably never became an actor, and John Payne
Collier’s conclusion to that effect rested on the two assumptions that the “Lodge” of Philip Henslowe’s
manuscript was a player and that his name was Thomas, neither of which is supported by the text.
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