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Scenes from Student Life: Episode 3: The Wits

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Episode 3: The Wits

The Wits

BBC Radio 4 - Scenes from Student Life, The Wits

Ellie Cawthorne on writers, actors and entertainers that were forged at university.

Whether it is the Cambridge Footlights now or the university wits that flowered in the time of Elizabeth I, Ellie Cawthorne discovers the talent that has emerged from academia.

University brings together talent of all kinds. Students who study one subject emerge to do something entirely different, often taking their place in the wider world as writers, actors and - sometimes - wits.

Recent graduate Ellie Cawthorne enters the 16th century hall at St Johns College Cambridge, where one of the earliest satirical plays about student life was performed. The Parnassus Plays of 1598 showed two eager students fending off temptations of alcohol and lust, only to end up as impoverished shepherds.

She talks to St John's Librarian Mark Nicholls about the plays, which were part of a flowering of talent that enlivened the cultural world of Elizabethan England. Writers like Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe were Shakespeare's contemporaries. They, as Professor Jennifer Richards of Newcastle University points out, could be considered forerunners of many later students who lived off their wits as much as their degrees. Hugh Laurie arrived at Cambridge to row, but met Stephen Fry, joined the Footlights, and both were launched into a performing career.

Ellie talks to the award-winning young director Liz Stevenson who tested her theatre skills at Nottingham University, and to Nish Kumar, stand-up comic, writer and broadcaster, who found during his years at Durham that he could make it as a latter-day 'Wit'.


Producer: Richard Bannerman
Series Producer: Nick Baker
A Testbed production for BBC Radio 4.

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Recent graduate Ellie Cawthorne explores 900 years of student life.

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