The custom, sure, of being called a king
Has fastened in his thought that he is such.
Ford, in his Tragedies, is not to be reckoned among Mr. Swinburne's "splendid slovens". His blank verse never degenerates into skimble-skamble slackness, but, compared with most of his contemporaries, he does not shine as a lyric poet. He retired to the country after the overthrow of the stage and the beginning of the civil war.
Shirley.
James Shirley, of an honourable family, was born in London, in 1596. He entered the Merchant Taylors' School, and, in 1612, went to St. John's, Oxford, where Laud was then master. Laud, who believed in "the beauty of holiness," is said to have prevented Shirley, as a blemished man, with a large mole on his face, from taking holy orders. He migrated to Cambridge, to St. Catherine's Hall, published a poem in 1616, did take orders, received a living; left it on becoming a Catholic, turned schoolmaster at St. Albans, and then went to town as a playwright.
His "Love's Tricks" was licensed in 1624-1625,—"a silly play," writes Mr. Pepys in 1667. Shirley was prolific; his "Witty Fair One" (acted 1628) is thought one of his best comedies. These dramas have a touch of the modern; we hear of "balls," a new name then for dancing parties. In "The Lady of Pleasure" (1635) Lady Bornwell's contempt for the country life and for country gentlemen, and her determination to spend her husband's fortune on the gaieties of the Court, are amusing, and we expect her to be a Lady Teazle. But, despite her husband's stratagem of beating her at her own game, and the humours of the nephew whom she has brought from Oxford, the piece can hardly be read with enthusiastic delight. It is deemed Shirley's masterpiece in comedy, and preludes to the comic drama of the Restoration and the Revolution of 1688. Dryden expresses extreme contempt for both Hey wood and Shirley; it is to be feared that his own plays are now no more popular than theirs.
After residing at Dublin under the great Earl of Strafford, and producing plays at the Viceregal Court, and after insulting in an ironic dedication of "The Bird in a Cage," the Puritan Prynne, who had been most cruelly punished for allusions in his work against the stage ("Histriomastix"), Shirley returned to London. His "The Cardinal" is imitated from Webster's "Duchess of Malfi," and with "The Traitor" is reckoned (though Shirley preferred "The Cardinal"), "the best of his flock" in tragedy. Pepys (1662) writes "there is no great matter in it," but Pepys's dramatic criticisms are no great matter. In 1642 came the shutting up of the theatres, and Shirley, after seeing the wars under his patron, the Duke of Newcastle, returned to his old profession as a schoolmaster.
He wrote a preface (1647) to some hitherto unprinted plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, commending their stage as a school of moral discipline, "In this silence of the stage thou hast a liberty to read these inimitable plays". In 1659 Shirley published his "Contention of Ajax and Ulysses," containing the noble lines which embalm his memory:—
The glories of our blood and state.
Are shadows, not substantial things.
His
Bid me no more good night, because
'Tis dark, must I away?