Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Shirley, James

⁠SHIRLEY, James (1596-1666), dramatist, belonged to the great period of our dramatic literature, but, in Lamb's words, he "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent genius in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common." His career of playwriting extended from 1625 to the suppression of stage plays by parliament in 1642. Born in London in 1596, he had been educated for a profession—at Merchant Taylors' school, St John's College, Oxford, and Catherine Hall, Cambridge. The church was his destination, but he turned Roman Catholic, and made a living for two years as a schoolmaster. His first play, Love Tricks, seems to have been accepted while he was teaching at St Albans, and for eighteen years from that time he was a prolific writer for the stage, producing more than thirty regular plays, tragedies, and comedies, and showing no sign of exhaustion when a stop was put to his occupation by the Puritan edict. He turned again to teaching for a livelihood and prospered, publishing some educational works under the Commonwealth. Besides these he published during the period of dramatic eclipse three small volumes of poems and masques, in 1646, 1653, and 1659. He survived into the reign of Charles II., but, though some of his comedies were revived, he did not again attempt to write for the stage. It is said that he and his second wife died of the fright caused by the great fire of 1666.

There is little original force but much stage-craft and manipulative dexterity in Shirley's plays. He was born to great dramatic wealth, and he handled it freely. It has been remarked that he did not, like some of his great predecessors, take his plots from narrative fiction or history, but constructed them for himself. This is true; but he constructed them out of the abundance of materials that had been accumulated by more originative men during thirty years of unexampled dramatic activity. He did not strain after novelty of situation or character, but worked with confident ease and buoyant copiousness on the familiar lines, contriving situations and exhibiting characters after types whose effectiveness on the stage had been proved by ample experience. He spoke the same language with the great dramatists, it is true, but this grand style appears in him as the mechanical knack of an able and clever workman. It is often employed for the artificial elevation of commonplace thought. "Clear as day" becomes in this manner "day is not more conspicuous than this unning"; while the proverb "Still waters run deep" is ennobled into—

 
The shallow rivers glide away with noise—
The deep are silent.

But it cannot be denied that he uses the poetic diction of his predecessors with ease, spirit, and judgment. His scenes are ingeniously conceived, his characters boldly and clearly drawn; and he never falls beneath a high level of stage effect.

His chief plays were Love Tricks, a comedy, 1625; The Maid's Revenge, a tragedy, 1626; The Brothers, a comedy, 1626; The Witty Fair One, a comedy, 1628; The Wedding, a comedy, 1628; The Grateful Servant, a tragi-comedy, 1629; The Changes, or Love in a Maze, 1632; The Gamester, a comedy, 1633; The Example (containing an imitation of Ben Jonson's Humours), 1634; The Opportunity, 1634; The Traitor, a tragedy (perhaps Shirley's best), 1635; The Lady of Pleasure (perhaps the best of his comedies), 1635; The Cardinal, a tragedy (an attempt to compete with Webster's Duchess of Malfi), 1641. An edition of his works in six volumes, with notes by Dyce and Gifford, was published in 1833.