Who were the University Wits and what is their significance in English literature?

The University Wits were a group of six writers of the late 1500s who set about to transform drama on the English stage. They were all university educated (hence the name). It has been observed that their contributions were significant:

They brought new coherence in structure, and real wit and poetic power to the language.

http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/drama/greene.html

The writers who made up this group included John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, and George Peele. All of them, except for Christopher Marlowe and George Peele, wrote prose in addition to plays and poetry. Individually and as a group, they exerted a strong influence upon William Shakespeare's work, as well as the works of other playwrights of his time. The University Wits loved language and took great joy in displaying their literary talents.

Who were the University Wits and what is their significance in English literature?

The so-called "University Wits" were among the earliest and most important writers of professional drama during the rise of professional theater in Elizabethan England. They were young men who had had the privilege of attending one of the two English universities then in existence: Oxford University and Cambridge University. Most people who went to universities at this time completed extensive study of the Bible and of rhetoric and other aspects of language. They also often studied classical literature as well as history and philosophy. Such training gave graduates of the universities real advantages as writers of plays. When men such as John Lyly, George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Nashe, and Christopher Marlowe came down to London from Cambridge or Oxford, they had much of the intellectual background to make them sophisticated writers of dramas. Although the idea of becoming playwrights had not been their reason for attending universities, their university training helped them distinguish themselves as writers when professional theaters began to develop in the final decades of the 1500s.

The university wits are often seen as members of the first wave of significant Elizabethan dramatists. Later writers, such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, were very widely read but had spent no time as students at universities. Some of the university wits welcomed and admired these new writers. Thomas Nashe, for instance, had good things to say about both Jonson and Shakespeare. However, at least one university wit (Robert Greene) seems to have felt bothered or even threatened by the emergence of Shakespeare. Whatever their reactions to these newcomers, the university wits -- Marlowe in particular -- had an enormous influence on later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

What is the contribution of the university wits to English literary history?

My answer will not be 500 words, but certainly can help you get there.

The University Wits were six well-educated men from the collegiate and academia circuit who embraced the traditional theatrical peasant roots, and combined their witticism and proper use of the English language with the witticism and natural use of language of the less educated classes. As a result of their work, our language expanded and extended, became more colorful, complex, and researched. Yet, it also gained an immense solidity as a force not to be reckoned with. These man worked (either independently or as a group) with all they had to give.

The University Wits were: Marlowe, Lyly, Nashe, Greene and Peele. They were contemporaries of Shakespeare, although he was not part of this group, probably because his background was not academia, like the others.  Their main focus was drama, which they balanced out making it accessible to both the lower and the upper classes- this never happened before.

So, as far as contributions, the University Wits added class, education, formality, complexity, historical background, and additional color to both the English language and the English theatre.