SHIRLEY or SHERLEY, JAMES English dramatist, was born in London in September 1596. His career of playwriting extended from 1625 to the suppression of stage plays by parliament in 1642. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' school, St. John's College, Oxford, and Catherine Hall, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in or before 1618. His first poem, Echo, or the Unfortunate Lovers (of which no copy is known, but which is probably the same as Narcissus of 1646), was published in 1618. He took orders and held a living near St. Albans, which he left on his conversion to Catholicism. He was then (1623-25) master of St. Albans grammar school. Shirley settled at Gray's Inn, London, in 1625, and for eighteen years was a prolific writer for the stage, producing more than thirty regular plays, tragedies and comedies, and showing no sign of exhaustion when a stop was put to his occupation by the Puritan edict of 1642. Between 1636 and 1640 Shirley went to Ireland, under the patronage apparently of earl of Kildare, and three or four of his plays were produced in Dublin. On the outbreak of war he seems to have served with the earl of Newcastle, but soon returned to London. He supported himself chiefly by teaching, 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 1646, 1653, 1655 and 1659. Wood says that he and his second wife died of fright and exposure after the great fire, and were buried at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields on Oct. 29, 1666.
Shirley constructed his own plots out of the abundance of ma terials that had been accumulated during thirty years of unex ampled dramatic activity. He worked with confident ease and buoyant copiousness on the familiar lines, contriving situations and exhibiting characters after types whose effectiveness on the stage had been proved by ample experience. His scenes are in geniously conceived, his characters boldly and clearly drawn; and he never falls beneath a high level of stage effect.
Shirley's tragedies are: The Maides Revenge (acted, 1626; printed, 1639) ; The Traytor (licensed, 1631 ; printed, 2635), which Dyce reckoned as Shirley's best tragedy ; Love's Crueltie (1631 ; printed, 1640) ; The Duke's Mistris (acted, 1636; printed, 1638) ; The Politi tian (acted, ; printed, 1655) ; The Cardinal (acted, 1641 ; printed, 1652), a good example of Shirley's later style, and characterized by Edmund Gosse as perhaps the last great play produced by the giants of the Elizabethan age. His comedies are: Love Tricks, or the School of Complement (licensed, 1625 ; printed under the latter title, 1631) ; The Wedding (licensed, 1626; printed, 1629) ; The Brothers (acted, 1626 ; printed, 1652) ; The Wittie Faire One (acted, 1628 ; printed, 1633) ; The Gratefull Servant (licensed in 1629 as The Faithful Servant; printed, 1630) ; Changes: Or Love in a Maze (acted and printed, 1632) ; Hide Parke (acted, 1632 ; printed, 1637) ; The Ball (acted, 1632 ; printed, 1639) ; The Bird in a Cage (acted and printed, 1633) , ironically dedicated to William Prynne ; The Young Admirall (licensed, ; printed, 1637) ; The Gamester (played at court, 1634; printed, 1637), written at the command of Charles I., who is said
to have invented or proposed the plot ; The Example (acted, 1634; printed, 1637) ; The Opportunity (licensed, 1634 ; printed, 1640) ; The Coronation (licensed, 1635, as his, but printed, 1640, as by Fletcher) ; The Lady of Pleasure (licensed, 1635 ; printed, 1637) ; The Constant Maid, or Love will find out the Way, printed in 1640 under the former title with St. Patrick for Ireland; The Royall Master (acted and printed, 1638, ed. with critical essay in C. M. Gayley's Representative English Comedies, New York, /914), an excellent comedy of intrigue, with an epilogue addressed to Strafford; The Doubtfull Heir (printed, 1652), licensed as Rosania, or Love's Victory in 164o; The Gentleman of Venice (licensed, 1639 ; printed, 1655) ; The Imposture (acted, 1640; printed, 1652) ; The Sisters (licensed, 1642 ; printed, 1653) ; The Humorous Courtier (perhaps identical with The Duke, licensed, 1631), printed, 1640; The Court Secret (printed, 1653). Poems (1646), by James Shirley, contained "Narcissus," and a masque dealing with the Judgment of Paris, entitled The Triumph of Beautie. A Contention for Honour and Riches (1633) appeared in an altered and enlarged form in 1659 as Honoria and Mammon. In 1653 a selection of his pieces was published as Six New Playes. He wrote the magnificent entertainment presented by the members of the Inns of Court to the king and queen in 1633, entitled The Triumph of Peace, the scenery being devised by Inigo Jones and the music by W. Lawes and Simon Ives. In this kind of composition he had no rival but Ben Jonson. His Contention of Ajax and Ulysses (printed, 1659) closes with the well-known lyric, "The Glories of our Blood and State." 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. See R. S. Forsythe, The relations of Shirley's plays to the Elizabethan drama (1914) .