University Wits

The fear and bitter anxiety caused by this plight for ambitious graduates is the basis for the three Parnassus plays, which were written by Cambridge students in their last year.

[4] Saintsbury argues that the Wits drew on the ploddingly academic verse-drama of Thomas Sackville, and the crude but lively popular entertainments of "miscellaneous farce-and-interlude-writers", to create the first truly powerful dramas in English.

"[4] The term "University Wits" was taken up by many writers in the 20th century to refer to the group of authors listed by Saintsbury, often using his basic model of dramatic development.

[7] G. K. Hunter argues that the new "Humanistic education" of the age allowed them to create a "complex commercial drama, drawing on the nationalisation of religious sentiment" in such a way that it spoke to an audience "caught in the contradictions and liberations history had imposed".

However, many scholars believe that the pamphlet was in fact written by Henry Chettle, a writer listed by Saintsbury as one of the "irregular band of outsiders" supposedly resented by the Wits.

Jenny Sager argues that "From its conception the term 'University Wits' has provided generations of critics with a sounding board from which to articulate their attitudes towards modern academia".