Shirley
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JAMES, an English dramatist; born in London, England and, Sept. 13, 1596; went to Merchant Taylors' School, whence he passed in 1612 to St. John's College, Oxford. Laud esteemed him highly, but discouraged him from seeking holy orders. 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, taught school for two years, and then retired to the metropolis, lived in Gray's Inn, and set up for a play maker. For his plots Shirley drew on his own inventiveness. Beaumont and Fletcher were his models, even more than Ben Jonson. Most of his plays are tragicomedies. His chief plays were "Love Tricks" (1625); "The Maid's Revenge" (1626); "The Brothers" (1626); "The Witty Fair One" (1628); "The Wedding" (1628); "The Traitor," his finest and also his strongest tragedy (1631); "The aze" (1632); Changes, or Love in a Maze" "The Gamester," an admirable comedy, (1633); "The Lady of Pleasure" (1635); and "The Cardinal." 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. 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). He died in poverty, Oct. 29, 1666.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts of Shirley's life and the list of his plays stand much as Collier's gave them in 1921. The one large change is editorial: the Gifford and Dyce edition of 1833, which Collier's rightly called "the only complete edition of his works," held that position for nearly two centuries until Oxford University Press began issuing a new scholarly Complete Works of James Shirley in the 2020s, edited from the early quartos. Modern accounts also tie his death more closely to the Great Fire of 1666 — he and his wife had been driven from their home and were buried on the same day — and treat him less as a late imitator of Beaumont and Fletcher than as the leading professional dramatist of the Caroline stage in his own right. He is still read chiefly for one lyric, "The glories of our blood and state," from The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses.
Written for this edition, 2026.