thumb|upright|Portrait of Shirley

James Shirley (September 1596 – October 1666) was an English poet and playwright. In Charles Lamb's view, Shirley "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 play writing extended from 1625 to the suppression of stage plays by the Parliament of England in 1642.

Biography

thumb|Arms of James Shirley: Paly of six, or and azure, a quarter ermine, a crescent for difference

Early life

Shirley was born in London and was descended from the Shirleys of Warwick, the oldest knighted family in Warwickshire. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London, St John's College, Oxford, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he took his BA degree in or before 1618.

In 1640 he returned to London, and found that in his absence Queen Henrietta's Men had sold off a dozen of his plays to the stationers, who published them in the late 1630s. As a result, he would no longer work for Queen Henrietta's company, and the final plays of his London career were acted by the King's Men.

Theatre closure and civil war

In 1642, his career as a playwright was stopped by the London theatre closure.

City Comedies set in 1630s London

  • Love Tricks, or the School of Complement (licensed 10 Feb 1625; first printed under its subtitle, 1631)
  • The Wedding (licensed 1626; first printed 1629)
  • The Witty Fair One (licensed 3 Oct 1628; printed 1633)
  • Changes: Or, Love in a Maze (licensed 10 Jan 1632; printed 1632)
  • Hyde Park (licensed 20 April 1632; printed 1637)
  • The Ball (licensed 16 Nov 1632; printed 1639)
  • The Gamester (licensed 11 Nov 1633; printed 1637)
  • The Lady of Pleasure (licensed 15 Oct 1635; printed 1637)

Tragicomedies, pastorals and others

  • The Grateful Servant (licensed 3 Nov 1629 as The Faithful Servant; first printed 1630)
  • The Humorous Courtier (licensed 17 May 1631; printed 1640).
  • The Bird in a Cage, or The Beauties (licensed 21 Jan 1633; printed 1633)
  • The Young Admiral (licensed 3 July 1633; printed 1637)
  • The Example (licensed 24 June 1634; printed 1637)
  • The Opportunity (licensed 29 Nov 1634; printed 1640)
  • The Coronation (licensed 6 Feb 1635 as Shirley's, but printed in 1640 erroneously as a work of John Fletcher)
  • The Duke's Mistress (licensed 18 Jan 1636; printed 1638)
  • The Royal Master (licensed 23 April 1638; first printed 1638)
  • St. Patrick for Ireland (performed ca. 1637–40; first printed 1640)
  • The Gentleman of Venice (licensed 30 Oct 1639; printed 1655)
  • The Doubtful Heir (licensed 1 June 1640 as Rosania, or Love's Victory; printed 1652)
  • The Arcadia (printed 1640)
  • The Imposture (licensed 10 Nov 1640; printed 1652)
  • The Brothers (licensed 26 May 1641; printed 1652)
  • The Constant Maid, or Love Will Find Out the Way (performed ca. 1630–40; first printed 1640)
  • The Sisters (licensed 26 April 1642; printed 1653)
  • The Court Secret (composed before 1642; printed 1653)

Masques and entertainments

  • A Contention for Honor and Riches (performed ca. 1625–32; printed 1633)
  • The Triumph of Peace (licensed 3 Feb 1634; printed 1634)
  • The Triumph of Beauty (ca. 1640; printed 1646)
  • The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the Armour of Achilles (performed ca. 1654–58; printed 1659)
  • Cupid and Death (performed 26 March 1653; first printed 1653)
  • Honoria and Mammon (printed 1659; performed 21 November 2013)

In 1633, Shirley revised a play by John Fletcher, possibly called The Little Thief, into The Night Walker, which was acted in 1634 and printed in 1640. In 1634–35, Shirley revised The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France, a play that George Chapman had written sometime between 1611 and 1622. The revised version was printed in 1639. Shirley has sometimes been credited as a collaborator with William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle on Cavendish's plays The Country Captain and The Variety (both printed 1649). The Ball, in the publication attributed to George Chapman and James Shirley, was written by Shirley alone.

Shirley's Poems (1646) contained the epyllion Narcissus and the masque The Triumph of Beauty. A Contention for Honour and Riches (1633) appeared in an altered and enlarged form in 1659 as Honoria and Mammon. His Contention of Ajax and Ulysses closes with the well-known lyric "The Glories of our Blood and State."

Shirley's canon presents fewer problems and lost works than the canons of earlier dramatists; yet William Cooke registered a Shirley tragedy titled Saint Albans on 14 February 1639 – a play that has not survived. The anonymous tragedy Andromana was assigned to Shirley when it was first published in 1660, though scholars have treated the attribution with scepticism.

The standard edition of Shirley's works is The Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirley, with Notes by William Gifford, and Additional Notes, and some Account of Shirley and his Writings, by Alexander Dyce (6 vols., 1833). A selection of his plays was edited (1888) for the Mermaid Series, with an introduction by Edmund Gosse. Volume 7 in this series is forthcoming in 2022.

Revivals

Shirley's work has occasionally seen revivals. Honoria and Mammon was staged in London at Shirley's church, on 21 November 2013. The Cardinal has seen an adaptation, Red Snake, and a production in London in April 2017. 'The Glories of Our Blood and State' (also known under the later title 'Death The Leveller') from The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses was often set to music, and played at the coronation of George IV in 1821.

Notes

References

  • Adams, Joseph Quincy. Shakespeare's Playhouses. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1917.
  • Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
  • Dyce edition at Google Books
  • James Shirley website at the University of Durham, UK
  • Digitized images of "Hide Parke: a comedie, as it was presented by her Majesties Servants, at the private house in Drury Lane" housed at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center