The Play of Wit and Science

The Play of Wit and Science is a mid-sixteenth-century English morality play written by John Redford. It is notable as one of the earliest plays to develop a moral thesis as part of a nominally unrelated plot. Redford was best known as a composer of keyboard music, and the play was written to be performed by the children's choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. The play concerns itself with education rather than salvation, stemming from Redford's role as a teacher rather than as a preacher. The character Wit initially sets off with naive enthusiasm to learn by his own initiative, but eventually gains appreciation for the guidance of instruction in a narrative that contains elements of chivalric romance. Elements of the play may also be a reference to Henry VIII's marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.

The play is known from a manuscript in the British Library (Additional 15233), which includes most of the play bound with pages of unrelated organ music. The manuscript omits the beginning few pages of the play, the music for the songs, and the lyrics of the final song. By one estimate, nearly half of the manuscript's pages may be missing. There is no evidence that the play was ever printed, but it inspired two rewrites, one of which was written by Francis Marbury, and the plot was familiar enough that a pastiche of it was included in the play Sir Thomas More.