Background
James Shirley was born on September 7, 1596 in London and was descended from the Shirleys of Warwick, the oldest knighted family in Warwickshire.
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James Shirley was born on September 7, 1596 in London and was descended from the Shirleys of Warwick, the oldest knighted family in Warwickshire.
He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and ordained about 1619.
On his conversion to Roman Catholicism he became a school master, and by 1625 was a playwright in London. Except for the four years from 1636 to 1640, which he spent in Dublin, he wrote for the London stage, being chief dramatist for the King's Men after Massinger's death. In the Civil War he served in the king's army and then resumed teaching. He died from exposure suffered during the London fire and was buried October 29, 1666. Shirley wrote masques, tragicomedies, tragedies, and comedies. Like John Fletcher's, his tragicomedies, in which the greater emphasis is on comedy, deal with romantic protagonists and clashes between love and honor. The Young Admiral (1633) and The Royal Master (1635) illustrate Shirley's skillful if artificial plots. His chief tragedies show both his gifts and his limitations. In The Traitor (1631) he builds a complicated action to a close in which the Duke discovers that he is embracing the corpse of his beloved, and is then killed by his kinsman, Lorenzo, who is killed by the lady's brother. The plotting is careful, the verse mellifluous, and the theatrical effectiveness undeniable; but all is artificially shallow. The Cardinal (1641) has similar qualities. Shirley's real achievement was in his comedy of manners, a happy blend of Jonson's humors and morality, Middleton's intrigues, and Fletcher's gaiety. The Witty Fair One (1628), Hyde Park (1632), and above all The Lady of Pleasure (1635) draw brilliant pictures of London society, with lively plot and realistic observation combining in witty satire. A moral touch is added by Shirley's favorite device, the clever lady who shames into virtue her would-be seducer. These plays foreshadow the more brilliant but less moral comedy of the Restoration.
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