who were afterwards put to their shifts.’ Wood further states that Shirley was at this time invited by the Earl (afterwards Marquis and Duke) of Newcastle ‘to take his fortune in the wars; for that count had engaged him so much by his generous liberality towards him that he thought he could not do a worthier act than to serve him, and so, consequently, his prince.’ Shirley had in 1638 dedicated to Newcastle ‘The Traitor,’ a play inferior among his tragedies only to ‘The Cardinal.’ Wood's assertion that Shirley did much to assist Newcastle ‘in the composure of certain plays which the latter afterwards published’ derives a slender support from the fact that the song in Newcastle's ‘Country Captain,’ ‘Come, let us throw the dice,’ was printed among Shirley's ‘Poems’ as a sort of rebus (see Dyce, Shirley, vi. 439, and cf. Cavendish, William (1592–1676)). There is no mention of Shirley in the ‘Life’ of Newcastle by his duchess; but the lines ‘To Odelia’ (ap. Dyce, vi. 408) certainly imply that Shirley took a personal part in the ‘war’ in which Newcastle was concerned from November 1642 till July 1644, when (after Marston Moor) he quitted England.
On the decline of the king's fortunes, says Wood, Shirley ‘retired obscurely to London, where, among other of his noted friends, he found Thomas Stanley (1625–1678) [q. v.], who exhibited to him’ (cf. the Dedication to The Brothers, printed 1652). This accomplished scholar appears to have at this time resided in the Middle Temple. His kinsman, Edward (afterwards Sir Edward) Sherburne, is likewise stated to have been on friendly terms with Shirley. Thus encouraged, the latter published in 1646 a small volume of ‘Poems,’ chiefly no doubt juvenile productions, and including ‘Narcissus, or the Self-Lover,’ together with ‘The Triumph of Beauty,’ ‘as presented by some young gentlemen for whom it was intended as a private recreation.’ He also furnished a preface ‘To the Reader’ to a series of ten hitherto unprinted dramas by Beaumont and Fletcher, referring in it to ‘this tragical age, in which the theatre has been so much outacted,’ and inviting the reader to ‘congratulate his own happiness that in this silence of the stage he has a liberty to read these inimitable plays.’ To the same volume he contributed some loyal lines predicting the king's recovery of his throne. Subsequently he wrote commendatory verses to the ‘Poems’ of Thomas Stanley and of Edmund Prestwich (1651), to Ogilby's ‘Fables of Æsop’ (1651), and to other publications (cf. Fleay, English Drama, ii. 235–236). The translation of Bonarelli's pastoral, ‘Phillis of Scyros’ (1655), has been attributed to him on no better evidence than that of the initials ‘J. S.’ on the title-page.
Wood states that in the course of these years he resumed ‘his old trade of teaching school,’ and, residing chiefly in Whitefriars, thereby ‘not only gained a comfortable subsistence, but educated many ingenious youths, who afterwards proved most eminent in divers faculties.’ One of these was Thomas Dingley or Dineley [q. v.] the antiquary. Shirley's usher at Whitefriars is said by Wood to have been a Scotsman of the name of David Whitford, who taught Ogilby enough Greek to enable him to publish a translation of Homer. Shirley's labours as a schoolmaster led to the publication in 1649 of his ‘Via ad Latinam Linguam complanata’ (dedicated to William Herbert, ‘Pembroke's’ grand-nephew), to which was attached a set of rules composed ‘for the greater delight and benefit of readers,’ in both English and Latin verse. This treatise, which Shirley's literary friends hailed by a collection of commendatory verses, was followed in 1656 by the ‘Rudiments of Grammar,’ with rules in English verse, reissued in 1660 in an enlarged edition under the title of ‘Manductio, or a Leading of Children by the Hand through the Principles of Grammar.’ It was republished under the title of ‘An Essay towards an Universal and Rational Grammar,’ by Jenkin J. Phillipps, in 1726.
But the theatre still attracted him. In 1653 he had published ‘Six New Playes,’ of which five had been performed before the troubles; and the esteem in which he was still held as a dramatist is shown by the notable lines prefixed by ‘Hall’ to one of these, ‘The Cardinal’ (cited ap. Genest, ix. 541). On 26 March of the same year his masque of ‘Cupid and Death’ was performed as a private entertainment presented to the Portuguese ambassador. In 1655 he printed two more plays, and in 1659 a small volume containing, together with ‘The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses’ (as privately performed, perhaps at an earlier date), the ‘moral’ of ‘Honoria and Mammon.’ But in the preface to the latter he deprecatingly added that this was ‘likely to be the last’ production of his put forth ‘dressed in dramatic ornament,’ since he had resolved that ‘nothing of this nature’ should henceforth ‘engage his pen or invention.’ The changes brought about by the Restoration failed to divert him from this resolution, although some of his plays were during his lifetime revived with more or less success (two of these were seen by Pepys—‘The Traitor’ repeatedly—between 1660 and 1666). No sneer could have been
