Introduction.

The oldest of the University Wits, John Lyly might also have become the most fortunate. A celebrity in his mid-twenties for his wit and learning and then playwright to the royal court, he secured a patron from the old nobility and a wife from the landed gentry. He belonged to a family of distinguished scholars and was distantly connected by both birth and marriage to Queen Elizabeth's Treasurer, Lord Burghley. The Queen appointed him Esquire of the Body in 1588, and important friends sponsored him four times as a member of parliament. His writings were influential: the two Euphues books (1578 and 1580) were reprinted for more than 100 years and were immediately so popular that imitators rushed to compete, including other 'Wits' like Lodge, Greene, and Nashe. His plays, though written for private theatre and court performance by boy choristers, offered new directions in comedy to public theatre playwrights such as Greene, Wilson, Shakespeare and Jonson.