Shirley, JAMES, dramatist, was born in London, September 18, 1596, and went at twelve to Merchant Taylors' School, whence he passed in 1612 to St John's College, Oxford. Wood tells us that Land esteemed him highly, but deterred him from seeking holy orders because of the large mole on his left cheek. He migrated, however, to Catharine Hall,
Cambridge, took orders, and held for a short time a living at or near St Albans, but, becoming a Catholic, resigned it, and made his bread (1623-24) by teaching in the grammar-school there, 'which employment also,' says Wood, 'finding uneasy to him, he retired to the metropolis, lived in Gray's Inn, and set up for a play-maker.' He worked hard in his vocation, being a diligent student of his great predecessors, and Shakespeare alone has bequeathed us a larger number of regular five-act plays—there are as many as thirty-three printed in the edition of Gifford and Dyce. In 1636 or 1637 he went to Ireland, probably under the protection of Lord Kildare, but soon returned to London, where the suppression of stage-plays in 1642 ended his livelihood. For some time he attended on the Earl of Newcastle, then returned to London again to earn his bread by teaching. He contributed the address 'To the Reader' to the first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher (1647). The Restoration revived his plays, but brought him no better fortunes; and Wood tells us that he and his second wife died on the same day, distracted by the Great Fire, and were buried in the same grave, October 29, 1666.
For his plots Shirley drew upon his own inventiveness, and Dyce points out that not one, if we except that extraordinary failure, St Patrick for Ireland, is founded upon events of British history. Beaumont and Fletcher were his models, even more than Ben Jonson, his 'acknowledged master,' but it must be owned he has but little of the grand Elizabethan manner. Most of his plays are tragic-comedies, and his best work is ever the tragic and pathetic portions. He is chaste by comparison with his contemporaries, and his plays breathe throughout a pensive and tender beauty that touches a sympathetic reader with a charm of its own. Bright and playful fancy, sweet and flowing dialogue, honest emotion and unwrought pathos—these are the threads out of which his magic robe is woven.
His chief plays were Love Tricks, a bright but ill-constructed comedy, though Pepys calls it a 'silly play' (1625); The Maid's Revenge, a poor tragedy (1626); The Brothers, a comedy (1626); The Witty Fair One, an excellent comedy (1628); The Wedding, a charming and indeed exquisite comedy (1628); The Grateful Servant, a fine tragi-comedy, prefaced by eleven copies of verses by various friends, including Massinger (1629); The Traitor, his finest and also his strongest tragedy (1631); The Changes, or Love in a Maze, a comedy (1632); The Bird in a Cage, a comedy (1632, printed next year with a sarcastic dedication to Prynne, then suffering his cruel punishment); Hyde Park, a bright comedy, branded by Pepys as 'a very moderate play' (1632); The Young Admiral, specially commended by the Master of the Revels as free from oaths (1633); The Gamester, an admirable comedy, revived by Garrick in 1758 (1633); The Example, an excellent comedy, Sir Solitary Plot a happy imitation of Ben Jonson's characters of humour (1634); The Opportunity, an amusing though improbable comedy (1634); The Lady of Pleasure, the most brilliant of his comedies (1635); The Imposture, a tragi-comedy (1640); and The Cardinal, to the author himself 'the best of his flock,' a tragedy coloured by Webster's Duchess of Malfi (1641). In 1646 he printed a volume of his poems, including his masque of The Triumph of Beauty. As a writer of masques he is second only to Ben Jonson. Among his best was The Triumph of Peace, presented by the Inns of Court before the king and queen in 1633. Another, The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses (1659), contains the noble and solemn lyric, 'The glories of our blood and state are shadows, not substantial things.' Almost as good is the ode, 'Victorious man of earth,' in Cupid and Death (1653), or that beginning 'Ye virgins that did late despair' in his dull play, The Imposture. The only complete edition of his works is that edited by Gifford and Dyce (6 vols. 1833). There is a selection of five plays, with The Triumph of Peace, in the 'Mermaid' series, by E. W. Gosse (1888).