James Shirley, (born September , London, Eng.—buried Oct. 29, , London), English poet and dramatist, one of the leading.
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Newcastle left the country after the battle of Marston Moor in ; Shirley made his way back to London and found a measure of security in the circle of the gentleman-scholar Thomas Stanley. He settled in the Whitefriars district and returned to school teaching, and seems to have been treated fairly leniently by the new regime. He published his poems, several of his plays, and a few other dramatic scripts; one of them was in fact a masque, Cupid and Death , commissioned for official performance before the Portuguese ambassador.
I will only add, it is like to be the last, for in my resolve, nothing of this nature shall, after this, engage either my pen or invention.
But Shirley wrote no new plays; he gave his pen and invention wholly over to the material of his pedagogy. In he published a Latin textbook; what poetic impulse remained went into the composition of rhymed mnemonics: A will signed in July names a second wife, Frances, and five children; Shirley and his wife both died in October of that year, in the aftermath of the great fire.
He was a dramatist generally content to work with interchangeable parts; his art is the art of their arrangement and combination. Where he is visibly original, it is usually by going the convention one or two better: Characters seldom acquire any memorable individuality; they rarely soliloquize and are not allowed much in the way of introspection, but are realized almost wholly through their place in the plot.
They often have a mathematical quality to them, structured around matched pairs of characters: The action depends heavily on arranged surprises, when mistaken identity or information is set right. Shirley made plays for those who enjoy watching witty machinery.
With such detachment comes versatility, and Shirley alternated among the genres throughout his career; it does not sort out into clear phases. Yet his touch also now seems more suited to some kinds of plays than to others—and perhaps least suited to tragedy. A sense of manipulative distance from convention edges unavoidably toward amusement. The most impressive tragedy to bear his name is The Tragedy of Chabot Admiral of France , published in as the joint effort of Shirley and George Chapman.
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The Traitor licensed in is a textbook example. A number of them fall into the Renaissance category of tragicomedy: The Gamester —the play which King Charles liked so well and which David Garrick adapted and revived in the eighteenth century—moves this genre to the border of comedy pure and simple. Shirley and his second wife were said to have died of fright and exposure after the Great Fire of London of , and were buried in London on 29 October Freedom is where the artist begins: Prose Home Harriet Blog. Visit Home Events Exhibitions Library. Poems by James Shirley.
Articles Freedom in Poetry. More About this Poet. Poems by This Poet Related Bibliography. The Glories of Our Blood and State. The Maid's Revenge, London, Phoenix theater, The Brothers probably not the surviving play of the same name; possibly the same play as The Wedding , London, Phoenix theater? The Wedding, London, Phoenix theater, Love's Cruelty, London, Phoenix theater, The Traitor, London, Phoenix theater, The Ball, London, Phoenix theater, He removed in to London, where he lived in Gray's Inn , and for eighteen years from that time he was a prolific writer for the stage, producing more than thirty regular plays, tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies , and showing no sign of exhaustion when a stop was put to his occupation by the Puritan edict of Most of his plays were performed by Queen Henrietta's Men , the playing company for which Shirley served as house dramatist, much as Shakespeare , Fletcher , and Massinger had done for the King's Men.
James Shirley
Shirley's sympathies were with the King in his disputes with Parliament and he received marks of special favour from the Queen. He made a bitter attack on William Prynne , who had attacked the stage in Histriomastix, and, when in a special masque was presented at Whitehall by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court as a practical reply to Prynne, Shirley supplied the text— The Triumph of Peace.
Between and Shirley went to Ireland, under the patronage apparently of the Earl of Kildare. Three or four of his plays were produced by his friend John Ogilby in Dublin in the Werburgh Street Theatre , the first ever built in Ireland and at the time of Shirley's visit only one year old. Shirley, when he returned to London in , would no longer work for the Queen Henrietta's company as a result; his final plays of his London career were acted by the King's Men.
On the outbreak of the English Civil War he seems to have served with the Earl of Newcastle , but when the King's fortunes began to decline he returned to London. He owed something to the kindness of Thomas Stanley , but supported himself chiefly by teaching and publishing some educational works under the Commonwealth.
Besides these, he published during the period of dramatic eclipse four small volumes of poems and plays, in , , and He "was a drudge" for John Ogilby in his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey , and 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. Wood says that Shirley, who was aged seventy, and his second wife died of fright and exposure after the Great Fire of London , and were buried at St Giles in the Fields on 29 October Shirley was born to great dramatic wealth, and he handled it freely.
He constructed his own plots out of the abundance of materials that had been accumulated during thirty years of unexampled dramatic activity. When the theatres closed in as a precaution against further spread of the plague, Shirley became dramatist for St. After the English Civil Wars —51 he returned to teaching and published two Latin grammars and some nondramatic verse and masques. Shirley was the most prolific and highly regarded dramatist during the reign of King Charles I, writing 31 plays, 3 masques, and 3 moral allegories.
He is best remembered for his comedies of fashionable London life, including The Wittie Faire One , Hyde Park , and The Lady of Pleasure , which depict a leisured, courtly society at love and play and look forward to the achievements of Restoration comedy. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.
James Shirley ()
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