The Universities in Early Modern England
Who Attended University in England
Para1University education was offered to a select number of young men in early modern England.
Around the age of 14, schoolboys who had completed grammar school had the option,
if their families could afford it and their intellectual gifts were sufficient, to
continue their education at the university level. The University of Oxford and the
University of Cambridge were the only two universities in England and were also two
of the most sought-after universities in Europe at the time. During the reign of Elizabeth
I and James I, the middle class began to prosper, causing university attendance to
increase significantly as more families coud afford to send bright young men to earn
university degrees. Young women were not permitted to receive a university education.
The Curriculum
Para2Universities taught a wide variety of subjects, although not the most modern ones.
Young men read and discussed Greek and Latin philosophy, classical history, classical
rhetoric, Greek and Latin poetry, Greek and Latin grammar, music, astronomy, arithmetic,
theology, and medicine, which included the study of Hippocrates and Galen, along with
Arabic and Jewish medical texts. The subjects studied were categorized by a tradition
from the medieval period into two disciplines: the first, called the trivium which included grammar, rhetoric, and logic; and the second, called the quadrivium, which primarily focused on subjects such as astronomy, geometry and arithmetic.
All subject areas were taught using ancient Greek and Roman texts, with minimal use
of more modern texts in European languages.
Para3Since their founding in the Middle Ages, universities remained very conservative in
nature; therefore, the new interest in Plato and Aristotle, Greek ideals, and new
approaches to medicine, which historians now call the Renaissance, were often ignored.
Traditional studies that centered on the early theologians of the Church and the Bible
were favored in university.
Playwrights in the University
Para4William Shakespeare did not attend university, although some other playwrights such
as Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson did. There was a group of playwrights and writers
in the late 16th century known as the university wits, who congregated in London in the last quarter of the 16th century. Thomas Lodge,
Christopher Marlowe, John Lyly, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, and George Peele were
among these educated men who transformed the literary genres of the period with energetic
new kinds of writing, including the widespread use of iambic pentameter, secular and
historical subject matter, and richly comic works that featured both bawdy and satiric
humor.
Para5University courses did not study Shakespeare’s or these other writers works until
the 20th century, although educated people began to read Shakespeare’s works widely
in the early years of the 19th century. The general attitude of academics toward Shakespeare
was hostility and contempt, even as his popularity grew among the literate public.
Key Print Sources
Jewell, Helen M. Education in Early Modern England. Red Globe Press, 1999.
Preiss, Richard and Deanne Williams. Childhood, Education and the Stage in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Key Online Sources
Best, Michael.
The universities.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/education/universities.html. Accessed 18 Oct. 2018.
Best, Michael.
The University Wits.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/drama/contemporaries/greene.html. Accessed 21 Mar. 2023.
Gillard, Derek.
Education in England: A History.May 2018. https://education-uk.org/history/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2023.
Wrightson, Keith.
Education: Cultural Influences Underlying an Increase in Schooling.Lecture at Yale University. 29 Oct. 2009. Brewminate.com, edited by Matthew MacIntosh. https://brewminate.com/education-and-literacy-in-early-modern-england/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.
Prosopography
Courtney Follett
Courtney Follett was a student at Utah Valley University.
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | The Universities in Early Modern England |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Courtney Follet and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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