No More Learning

A word will suffice as to Monuments of
Honor, a city pageant, or A Monumental Column, an elegy on
the death of prince Henry (1613), the only poem of length by
Webster which has come down to us. It contains a few fine lines,
more than one of which were subsequently transferred to his
dramasan apologue conceived in the same vein as that of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy, and a few turns of thought and phrase which
recall the author's spiritual affinity with Donne.
It remains only to ask: what is the secret of Webster's genius ?
What are the qualities which give the distinctive seal to his
imaginative creations ? For the answer to this question we need
hardly go beyond the two tragedies. His later works offer
reflections, more or less faint, more or less intermittent, of the
qualities we associate with his genius. But the authentic image,
the clear-cut features, the colour and the harmony, are here
alone.
! First, then, within somewhat narrow limits, Webster shows
a profound knowledge of human character and a keen sense of the
tragic issues of human life. Vittoria and the duchess are among
the great creations of the Elizabethan drama. Setting Shakespeare
aside, there is no character of that drama which surpasses them in
vividness; only two or three which approach them. Nor, in the
duchess, at any rate, is there any marked quality to lay hold of. It
is by atmosphere and temperament, by her sweet womanliness and
unstudied dignity, that she becomes known to us. And these are
just the things which are most impalpable, which only the highest


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186
Tourneur and Webster
genius can bring home to the imagination. No less important,
perhaps even more so, is the sense of tragic issues. And, here
again, Webster comes nearer to Shakespeare than any other of the
Elizabethans, with the possible exception of Ford. Shakespeare
found the deepest tragedy in the resistance of inborn heroism to all
assaults from without; in the triumph of the inner self, when all
outward happiness is dashed in pieces. So it is in Hamlet, King
Lear and Othello. And something of the same effect is attained
in The White Divel and The Dutchesse Of Malfy. It is attained,
also, in Ford's The Broken Heart.
Webster, however, is not only a great tragic dramatist. He is
also a great poet. And the same sombre cast of thought which
made him the one appears also in the other. His imagination
loves to linger round thoughts and symbols of mortality, to take
shape in 'strange images of death. ' The grim horrors of The
Dutchesse Of Malfy will at once recur to the memory; the yew tree
of Vittoria spreads its gloom over the whole drama. Yet nothing
is more remarkable than the thrift with which Webster uses this
perilous material. His reserve presents the strongest contrast
with the wild waste of the other dramatists of blood. Everything
in the two tragedies is subordinated to imaginative ends ; every-
thing is presented with the self-restraint of the artist. Nowhere
is the essentially poetic genius of the dramatist more manifest
than here; nowhere does his kinship with all that is best in the
other arts, particularly that of the painter, appear more plainly.
The latter point has hardly received due attention. Yet no reader
can fail to notice the eagerness with which this poet provides a
pictorial setting for the action of his drama; the pains he takes to
imprint upon the eye the countenance, gestures and bearing of
the characters in his most significant scenes. The opening scene
of The Dutchesse Of Malfy is devoted largely to this purpose.
The same appears in the trial scene of The White Divel. And other
instances, mainly from The Dutchesse Of Malfy, will readily suggest
themselves. It is doubtful whether this quality is so persistently
marked in any other dramatist, with the single exception of
Marston. And no one will claim that the pictures of Marston
approach those of Webster in imaginative genius. Allied with
this, perhaps, is his love of connecting a whole train of thought
with a tangible image, of embodying his reflections on life in
symbols which, at the first moment, may seem insignificant or
repulsive, but which acquire a curious fascination from the sur-
roundings in which he places them. It was this that made him,


## p. 187 (#205) ############################################

Webster's Imaginative Power 187
like Donne or Sir Thomas Browne, a lover of strange learning or
forgotten fragments of erudition, and led him, like Burton, to ran-
sack the dustbeaps of antiquarian research. The instinct is typical
of his age; but no man put it to uses more imaginative. With this
peculiar cast of imagination, the style of Webster is in marvellous
accord: compressed and pregnant; full, at once, both of grace and
of severity; capable of sudden flashes—'Cover her face; mine eyes
dazzle ; she died young'-capable, also, of a sustained musical
cadence, as in Cornelia’s dirge, or the wonderful lyric of Leonora.


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CHAPTER VIII
FORD AND SHIRLEY
ONE of the most significant facts in connection with the two
poets who close the list of the major dramatists of the great period is
that their work was produced in the years following the publication
of the first collected edition of the plays of Shakespeare. Previous
playwrights had studied and imitated their predecessors; but, for
the most part, such study had been carried on in the theatre.
Gradually, the drama had been winning acknowledgment of its
right to be regarded as literature, and the appearance of the first
folio of Shakespeare, in 1623, may fairly be taken as marking
the achievement of victory. The result of this new attitude was
twofold: first, the works of the master and his contemporaries
could now be brooded over and assimilated in the study, and,
secondly, the younger playwrights wrote with a view to being
read as well as heard and seen. Evidences of the coming of the
change are, of course, to be found before this date, certainly as
early as the Jonson folio of 1616; but Ford and Shirley stand out
as belonging exclusively to this literary' stage. Ford is never
tired of insisting that he was a gentleman of letters, not a theatrical
hack; and Shirley wrote at least one closet drama. In dealing
with their works, then, we are discussing not merely the last
phase of Elizabethan theatrical activity, but, also, the first chapter
of what may be called, in a special sense, modern dramatic
literature.
John Ford was a native of Ilsington in Devonshire, where
he was baptised on 17 April 1586. On his father's side, he belonged
to an old landed family, and, on his mother's, he was related to
lord chief justice Popham. He may have studied at Oxford, since
there is a record of the matriculation of a John Ford at Exeter
college in 1601 ; but his university career must, in any case, have
been short, as he became a member of the Middle Temple in the
November of the following year. Further information about his


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Ford's Non-dramatic Productions
189
career is confined to what can be gathered from the dedications
of his works, and from the exchange of commendatory verses of
the conventional sort. After the publication of his last play,
in 1639, he disappears from view. He seems to have been a man
a
of a somewhat melancholy temperament, independent in his
attitude towards the public taste, and capable of espousing un-
popular causes.
An instance of this last named quality appears in his first
publication, Fame's Memorial (1606), an elegy on the death of
Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire, second husband of the famous
Penelope Devereux. No reason is known why Ford should have
chosen to publish a eulogy of a man who had died out of favour at
court; but the fact is noteworthy as hinting an interest in a story
which, as we shall see, may not improbably have suggested to him
part of the plot of one of his most famous plays. The poem itself !
is long and tiresome, smooth in versification, abstract in diction,
often obscure and affected in style.
His romantic tendencies were further displayed in the same
year in his Honor Triumphant ; or the Peeres Challenge. In
the prose part of this pamphlet, Ford supplies a highflown defence
of four 'positions' which four young nobles had undertaken to
support in a tournament in honour of the visit to England of king
Christian IV of Denmark. The positions were that knights in
ladies' service have no free will; that beauty is the maintainer
of valour; that fair lady was never false ; that perfect lovers are
only wise. The triteness of the matter, the prevailing hyperbole and
the lingering traces of Euphuism that mark the style, would hardly
call for mention here, were it not that, in the very theses which
Ford is half seriously upholding, we find a significant connection
with the motives underlying some of his most important mature
work. What we must note is that Ford, at the age of twenty, is
writing prose and verse highly romantic in spirit, and involving
a tolerant, if not an admiring, attitude towards conduct entirely at
variance with conventional standards. The Monarches Meeting,
appended to this pamphlet, is an early instance of the stanza of
Gray's Elegy.
Ford's non-dramatic work closes with A Line of Life (1620),
a didactic tract on conduct, apparently influenced by Bacon's
Essays, but lacking their pithiness and epigrammatic vigour.
It may be significant of Ford's personal attitude towards religion
that this serious lay sermon is purely pagan in inspiration and
in spirit.


## p. 190 (#208) ############################################

190
Ford and Shirley
a
Omitting consideration of works no longer extant, we find
Ford's earliest attempts at dramatic writing made in collaboration
with Dekker. The Witch of Edmonton is based on the story
of Elizabeth Sawyer, who was executed for witchcraft in 1621,
and it was probably written soon after that date. The respective
shares of Dekker and Ford in this production are still unsettled,
perhaps William Rowley, too, had a share in it'; but the direct-
ness of the moral lesson conveyed, the witch plot with its comedy
and its realism in the treatment of humble life and the picture
of the yeoman's household, are as characteristic of Dekker as
they are unlike anything certainly Ford's. On the other hand,
Frank, whose weakness and crime bring about the main tragedy,
finds his defence in laying the blame on Fate in the fashion of
Ford's other sinners; and in the scenes where this character is
prominent, possibly the larger part of Ford's share is to be
found. The play is a domestic tragedy of great impressiveness, its
a
chief flaw being the failure of the attempt to join the two plots.
The Sun's-Darling: A Moral Masque (acted 1624, but not
published till 1656) is generally believed to have been originally
written by Dekker and revised, with additions, by Ford?
The first independent drama printed by Ford was The Lover's
Melancholy, acted in 1628 and published in the following year.
This somewhat slow-moving romance turns on the melancholy of
a prince grieving over the disappearance of his sweetheart. The
girl, whose loss has also deprived her father of his senses and
delayed the marriage of her sister, is present throughout in the
disguise of a man, and the love she inspires in the princess is,
in turn, the obstacle that prevents her cousin from winning that
lady. The discovery of the lost girl's identity, which might as well
have occurred in the first act, solves all the entanglements and
permits a happy ending; but this discovery is delayed in order to
enable Ford to occupy his scenes with a psychological analysis
of the 'lover's melancholy. ' This analysis is strongly influenced
by Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, from which are directly
taken the materials for the Masque of Melancholy in the third
act. The account of the finding of the disguised girl is reminiscent
of Philaster, and is made the occasion for the telling of the story of
the nightingale's death from Strada's Prolusiones. The main plot
has recently been traced by Stuart Pratt Sherman to Daniel's
Hymens' Triumph, and reminiscences of Hamlet, Lear and other
Shakespearean plays are obvious. In spite of all these borrowings,
1
1 Cf. ante, chap. II.
3 See ibid.


## p. 191 (#209) ############################################

The Broken Heart
191
and of the fact that many of the characters belong to well recognised
stage types, the play afforded the contemporary observer abundant
evidence of the advent of a new dramatist. The delicacy shown in
the treatment of emotion, the sweetness of the verse and the
happiness of the phrasing pointed to a poet who only needed
discipline in stagecraft to achieve distinction.
Ford acquired this technical skill with wonderful rapidity, if
we are correct in supposing The Broken Heart (printed in 1633)
to have been his next play. The plot of this tragedy shows much
originality, and it is conducted through many intricacies to a highly
effective catastrophe. The princess Calantha loves and is loved
by Ithocles, a brilliant young warrior, who had forced his sister
Penthea, in spite of her love for Orgilus, into a marriage with the
jealous Bassanes. Penthea remains faithful to her husband to
the despair of her lover, and Orgilus, repulsed, turns to seek
revenge. Penthea goes mad and dies, and, beside her dead body,
Orgilus causes to be placed a chair in which he induces Ithocles to
sit, and which closes on him and holds him helpless while Orgilus
stabs him to death. In the last act, news is brought to Calantha
in the midst of revels at court of the death of her father, then
of those of Penthea and of Ithocles; but she dances on to the end.
Orgilus is condemned, and, in the final scene, Calantha, before the
altar, puts a wedding ring on the finger of the dead Ithocles, hands
over her newly inherited crown to the prince of Argos and dies of
a broken heart. The last two scenes, if somewhat deliberately
theatrical, are among the most beautiful and memorable in the
drama of the period. No source has been found for the story
of Calantha, though suggestions from Sidney's Arcadia seem to
have been used throughout. In the prologue, it is implied that
the plot has a foundation in fact, and Sherman has ingeniously
argued that, in the situation of Penthea, the dramatist consciously
treated the story of that Stella whom Ford had long before sought
to justify in Fame's Memorial. Burton's influence is again dis-
cernible in the treatment of the jealousy of Bassanes ; but, on
the whole, this play is much less imitative than its predecessor.
Since something will have to be said on the subject of Ford's
dubious morality, it is only just to point out that, in this play,
Penthea reaches a lofty standard in her perception of the essential
unchastity of a loveless marriage. Yet, as we shall see, her con-
viction is not unconnected with the theory that undermines the
morality of the later plays——the dogma of the supremacy and
inevitableness of passion.


## p. 192 (#210) ############################################

192
Ford and Shirley
The influence of Sidney and Shakespeare persists in the next
tragedy, Loves Sacrifice (printed 1633). Illicit passion is here the
dominant theme. The duke of Pavy has married the beautiful
but humbly born Bianca, who is loved by his favourite Fernando.
The duchess's virtuous resistance to Fernando's suit leads him
to change his passion to friendship, and his strength is soon tested
by the weakening of Bianca, who comes at night to his chamber
and offers herself to him, purposing to kill herself afterwards.
They swear mutual but chaste love. Meantime, the duke's sister
Fiormonda, whose love Fernando has repulsed, and the villainous
secretary d'Avolos, excite the duke's jealousy, and arrange to
make him spectator of a love scene between Fernando and the
duchess in her bedchamber. The duke breaks in and accuses
Bianca. She acquits Fernando of guilt, confesses to having
tempted him and brazenly tells her husband that she preferred
Fernando as the better man. The duke, enraged, kills her, and
then seeks Fernando, who, in turn, acquits Bianca and blames
himself. The duke believes, and, at the funeral, eulogises Bianca
as a model of chastity, when, from the tomb, Fernando enters
defiant and drinks poison. The duke stabs himself; and Roseilli,
the now accepted suitor of Fiormonda, becomes duke, condemns
d'Avolos and divorces his own bride. The purely physical view of
chastity which is characteristic of much of the Jacobean drama is
nowhere exhibited so extravagantly as here. Ford clearly sym-
pathises with the lovers throughout, and, in the duke's admiring
attitude at the close, carries his theory to a climax that would be
revolting if it were not patently absurd. In the main plot, the chief
literary influences are from Othello and Macbeth and Middleton's
Women Beware Women, the story itself being derived, according
to Sherman, from Gascoigne's Ferdinando Jeronimi. The sub-
plot of Ferentes is based on the story of Pamphilus in Sidney's
Arcadia, the wretched farce being Ford's own.
Tis Pitty Shees a Whore (printed 1633) is the tragedy most
frequently cited in evidence of Ford's 'decadent' tendencies. The
main plot turns on the love of a sister and brother. The sister
accepts a husband to conceal her sin, and, when discovery is
inevitable, the brother kills her and rushes into the presence
of the father with his sister's heart on a dagger. In the general
catastrophe that follows, father, husband and brother al die.
This simple plot is combined with no fewer than three sub-plots,
two of which are woven into it with great skill. The third sub-
plot, that of Bergetto, is, in the beginning, farcical; but the


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Perkin Warbeck. The Fancies
193
foolish hero of it meets his death through a mistake that gives
a thrill of horrified pity. The dialogue is rich in passages of great
beauty, and the characterisation, especially in the differentiation
of the two lovers and their attitude towards the crime, is managed
with subtlety. No objection lies against the introduction of the
fact of incest, but the dramatist's attitude is sympathetic, and he
apparently assents to the fatalism with which the brother excuses
his passion. Both the strength and the defects of Ford are here
fully revealed ; and nowhere else do the tenderness and poetry of
his verse, the delicacy of his psychology and the impressiveness of
his handling of a dramatic situation, lend their aid to an assault
at once so insidious and so daring upon the foundations of accepted
morality. The plot, so far as is known, is original, such parallels as
have been noted being too remote to be regarded as direct sources.
The air clears in Perkin Warbeck (printed 1634), a notable return
to the chronicle history, which had scarcely been cultivated for
a generation. The play is based on Bacon's History of Henry VII
and Thomas Gainsford's True and Wonderful History of Perkin
Warbeck (1618), and, in his substantial adherence to history,
the dramatist follows the tradition of this dramatic type. He
obviously found his model in the histories of Shakespeare; and
the slightly archaic flavour of the whole work is increased by the
use of blank verse somewhat more formal and regular than Ford
is accustomed to write. The plot, however, is simpler than in the
Shakespearean histories, there is less richness of episode and the
play falls short chiefly in a certain lack of intensity. The hero
derives dignity from the carefully preserved assumption that he
believed in his own claims, and Huntly and his daughter
Katherine, whom Warbeck marries, are admirable figures. In
Dalyell, Katherine's rejected suitor, Ford had the opportunity, of
which he might have been expected to make more, of creating a
telling romantic figure. The comedy is confined to the low-born
followers of Warbeck, who are kept well in character, and who, if
only mildly amusing, have none of the vulgarity of the comic
figures in Ford's earlier plays. On the whole, it is unmistakably
a workmanlike performance.
The comedy of The Fancies, Chast and Noble (printed 1638)
is a somewhat careless performance. Octavio, marquis of Siena,
through the instrumentality of his nephew and Livio, a courtier,
induces Livio's sister Castamela to join the Fancies,' three young
girls kept in seclusion by the supposedly impotent marquis. It
appears later that the girls are Octavio's nieces, and that the
E. L. VI.
CE. VIII.
13


## p. 194 (#212) ############################################

194
Ford and Shirley
marquis's relations and intentions are honourable. But the hoax,
which is played not only on the court but also on the audience,
prolongs a more than doubtful situation. So imperfectly are
the motives of the action indicated that it almost seems as if
the dramatist had clearly worked out neither his plot nor his
conception of the main characters, until his play was half written.
Livio, the most interesting man in the piece, is guilty of a
puzzling change of attitude ; and Castamela’s repulse of the
suggestions, first of the marquis and, later, of her brother, which
occasions the finest scenes in the drama, is weakened by the
fundamental unreality of the situation. The underplot deals with
the relations to her brother and husbands of Flavia, who has been
bought by a great lord from her first husband. Out of this
unpromising material, some effective situations are developed; but
here, too, Ford seems to have been at the beginning uncertain as
to the kind of character to give to the heroine. The prologue
states that the plot is original, a claim that by no means disposes
of Sherman's attempt to trace a strong line of influence from
Jonson's Volpone.
The list of Ford's extant plays closes with the romantic comedy,
The Ladies Triall (acted 1638). The main plot of this play is very
simple. Auria, a noble Genoese driven by poverty to the wars,
leaves his young wife under the eye of his friend Aurelio.
Adurni, a gallant lord, attempts her virtue and is repulsed; but
Aurelio's suspicions are aroused, and, on Auria's return, Aurelio
kindles the husband's jealousy. Through the frankness of Adurni,
the heroine is cleared, and all ends well. Both husband and
wife are nobly drawn, and the suspicious but faithful friend is
clearly conceived. The scene in which the wife defends herself
is full of dignity and beauty; and the discontented lover, Malfato,
late in the play rises in language and conduct to heights that
Ford seems not to have contemplated at the outset. This is
another of the indications which occur, especially in the later
plays, of a certain carelessness and languor in the manage-
ment of both action and character. It is further exemplified in
the sub-plot of Levidolche, where the absurdity of the stage
convention of disguise is carried to a high pitch in the failure of
Benatzi's nearest relatives to recognise him in ragged clothes.
A second sub-plot, that of Amoretta and her mock-suitors, shows
the influence of Jonson. The main plot seems to be original, and
certainly calls for no great inventive power. Benatzi shows in-
debtedness to Ancient Pistol.


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Ford and Decadence
195
Several of Ford's productions have perished. Four of these,
An IU Beginning has a Good End (1613), The London Merchant,
The Royal Combat and Beauty in a Trance, though entered in the
Stationers' register, were not printed, and the manuscripts are
said to have been among those destroyed by Warburton's cook.
In the last of these, as in the masque entitled The Fairy Knight
and in The Bristowe Merchant (both licensed 1624), Ford col-
laborated with Dekker, and, in A Late Murther of the Sonne
upon the Mother (licensed 1624), with Webster. These bring the
total of the plays in which Ford had a share to sixteen; and it
must be remembered in summing up his achievement and his
characteristics that we must base our judgment upon little more
than half of his work.
It is customary to instance Ford as typical of the decadence
of the Elizabethan drama, and it therefore becomes important for
a view of that drama as a whole, as well as for an estimate of Ford
individually, to enquire what the term means and whether it can
be justified. Applied to Ford, it has reference both to his subjects
and to his manner of treatment. Of his three tragedies, two are,
almost in the modern sense, 'problem plays,' in which the chief
characters are faced by the dilemma of having to choose between
love and loyalty to legal ties; the third deals with incest. Here,
already, we have themes all but unused by Shakespeare and his
predecessors, and the mere fact of a dramatist's absorption in such
subjects might be regarded as a symptom of change. But Beaumont
and Fletcher, to name no others, many years before had touched
these themes, and Ford is generally regarded as marking a more
advanced stage than they. The difference becomes more striking
when method of treatment is considered. Not only is the difficulty of
the tempted soul treated sympathetically by Ford, but the question
is almost left open and the burden of guilt is shifted to the
shoulders of Fate. In this, there is a clear departure from the
assumption by the earlier dramatists of the validity of accepted
morality, and there is brought into these tragedies an atmosphere
of moral instability. Another evidence of change may be found in
the violence and sensationalism of Ford's catastrophes. Fernando,
crawling from the tomb to drink his poison and die over the
corpse of the woman his love had ruined; Giovanni, rushing into
the presence of his father with the heart of his sister-mistress on
a dagger; Calantha, with the theatrically contrived setting for her
own death-all point to the exhaustion of more natural appeals to
the emotions, to a desperate attempt to whip up excitement at all
13_2


## p. 196 (#214) ############################################

196
Ford and Shirley
costs. Finally, in his attempts at comedy, Ford sinks to a lower
level than any dramatist of his class, and his farce lacks the
justification of much of the coarse buffoonery of his predecessors.
It is not realistic; it is not the expression of high spirits; it is
a perfunctory attempt to season tragedy and romance with an
admixture of rubbish, without humour and without joy.
Of the first and most fundamental of these defects, some
explanation may be found in Ford himself. We have noted his
youthful defence of such romantic propositions as that ‘knights in
ladies' service have no free will. ' This and similar ideas are
frequent enough in the romantic pastoralism of Sidney, Spenser
and their contemporaries. But in these writers such theories of
the supremacy and divine origin of love were presented in an
Arcadian setting, under purely ideal conditions, and, on the whole,
were kept clear of practical life. The young Ford was steeped
in this romantic idealism, and we have seen him applying it to
actual persons in his apology for Stella and Charles Blount. But
the mature Ford was a dramatist who had learned his craft from
Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Massinger and the rest; and,
when we find this lawless idealism given form with all the skill in
characterisation, dialogue and action inherited from the masters
of realism, it ceases to be a harmless dream and becomes, instead,
a fountain of anarchy. But it does not lose all its beauty. The
depth of Ford's insight into the human heart torn by conflicting
passions, the intensity of his sympathy, his mastery of a beautiful
and tender diction and of a blank verse of great sweetness, along
with such technical powers as have already been noted, suffice
to give him a distinguished position among writers of tragedy.
James Shirley was born in London in September, 1596, and
entered Merchant Taylors' school on 4 October 1608, where he
seems to have shown himself an apt scholar. From school, he went,
in 1612, to St John's college, Oxford, then under the presidency
of Laud. It is recorded by Wood in Athenae Oxonienses, our
chief source of information concerning Shirley's life, that Laud, who
liked and appreciated Shirley, objected to his taking orders on
account of his having a large mole on his left cheek. The length
of Shirley's stay in Oxford is unknown; but it was probably short,
for he is known to have transferred himself to Catharine hall,
Cambridge, whence he took his degrees. Having taken orders,
about 1619, he obtained a living at St Albans in Hertfordshire;
but, as he was shortly afterwards converted to the church of


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Shirley's Earlier Career
197
Rome, he resigned his charge and became a master in the grammar
school of St Albans, in 1623. In February 1625, his first play
was licensed, and it was probably soon after this that he gave
up teaching for playwriting, coming to London and residing in
Gray's inn. His dramatic labours brought him a considerable
income, and drew the favourable notice of the court, especially of
queen Henrietta Maria; but it does not appear that this resulted
in any substantial advantage to the poet.
His standing in the
fashionable world may be inferred from the terms of the dedications
of his plays to various noble personages, and, with more assurance,
from the fact that he was chosen to write the great masque, The
Triumph of Peace, which the four inns of court presented to the
king and queen in 1634. In 1635, John Ogilby opened a theatre
in Dublin, and it was probably he who induced Shirley to visit
Ireland. The dates of this visit are a matter of inference; but it
seems likely that Shirley first crossed in 1636, and returned to
England for a short time in the next year, but did not permanently
take up his residence in London again till 1640. While in Ireland,
he produced The Royall Master, The Doubtfull Heir, The Constant
Maid and St Patrick for Ireland. The Gentleman of Venice and
The Polititian may, also, belong to this period. His dramatic
activity continued uninterrupted until 1642, when the closing of
the theatres left him with The Court Secret on his hands, finished,
but not acted. On the outbreak of the civil war, Shirley left
his wife and children in London and followed his patron, the earl
(later marquis and duke) of Newcastle, to the field; 'for that
count,' says Wood, 'had engaged him so much by his generous
liberality towards him, that he thought he could not do a worthier
act, than to serve him, and so consequently his prince. ' Wood also
reports that Shirley assisted the duke in the composition of certain
plays, but this collaboration has not been held to have increased
the reputation of Shirley. After the defeat at Marston moor in
1644, Newcastle fled to the continent, and, later, Shirley came
back to London, where he attempted to earn money by the publi-
cation of earlier writings as well as by new compositions. He was
helped by the patronage of the wealthy scholar, Thomas Stanley,
but soon returned to his former profession of schoolmaster, which
sustained him for the rest of his days. With the reopening of the
theatres, he did not resume the writing of plays, though several
of his earlier works were revived. He injured his reputation
(more, probably, than he benefited his purse) by assisting Ogilby
in his translations of Homer and Vergil, using a classical


## p. 198 (#216) ############################################

198
Ford and Shirley
knowledge which he had put to better employment in the
writing of Latin grammars. The end is best told in the words
of Wood:
At length . . . he with his second wife Frances were driven by the dismal
conflagration that happened in London an. 1666, from their habitation near
to Fleet Street, into the parish of S. Giles's in The Fields in Middlesex,
where being in a manner overcome with affrightments, disconsolations, and
other miseries, occasion'd by that fire and their losses, they both died within
the compass of a natural day: whereupon their bodies were buried in one
grave in the yard belonging to the said church of S. Giles's, on the 29th
of Octob. in sixteen hundred sixty and six.
From the uniformly friendly tone of Shirley's references to his
contemporaries and fellow dramatists, and of theirs to him, we
infer that he was a man of amiable character; and his more
personal writings indicate his modesty. But, beyond these cha-
racteristics, there is little in the record to help to a picture of
the man.
In 1646, Shirley collected and published a number of his
non-dramatic poems. A manuscript in the Bodleian library
supplies variant versions of a large number of these, and a few
additional pieces. For the most part, these poems are amorous
and personal, and show, to a much greater extent than his
dramas, evidences of that discipleship to Ben Jonson which he
was ever ready to acknowledge. Many of them appeared originally
as songs in the dramas, or as prologues and epilogues; others
are epithalamiums, epitaphs and elegies. Though conventional
in manner and matter, they are often graceful and ingenious.
One song rises far above the rest, and is one of the great lyrics
not merely of Shirley's age, but of English literature. "The glories
of our blood and state,' the funeral chant which closes The Con-
tention of Ajax and Ulysses, would have been sufficient to ensure
a place for Shirley in our anthologies, even had all memory of
his dramas been lost. Narcissus, or The Self-lover is almost
certainly a republication of Echo, or The Infortunate Lovers,
which Shirley had issued in 1618. This is an example, not without
beauty, of the elaborate re-telling of Ovidian tales which many
Elizabethan poets attempted. Shirley's immediate model seems
to have been the Venus and Adonis of Shakespeare.
To the closing of the theatres, which checked the production
of Shirley's dramas, we are indebted for the preservation of an
exceptionally large proportion of them; for the enforced cessation
· Rawlinson, Poet. 88.


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Shirley's Tragedies
199
of acting during the puritan domination led to the printing of
many plays that might otherwise have perished in manuscript.
Out of some forty dramatic pieces recorded as Shirley's, not more
than three have been lost. Of the remainder, seven are tragedies,
twenty-four are comedies, three are masques and three belong to
none of the recognised dramatic types of the time. The tragedies,
though comparatively few, contain Shirley's most memorable work.
They begin with The Maides Revenge (1626), based on a story of
the jealousy of sisters from Reynolds's God's Revenge against
Murder. The characters are mostly familiar types re-drawn with
fair skill. The comic element reaches a climax in an amusing
farcical scene in the study of a quack, who is seen treating a
succession of patients. Five years passed before Shirley again
attempted tragedy; and, when The Traytor appeared, in 1631, he
showed that he had mastered the technique of stagecraft. The
plot of this really great drama is a free treatment of the story of
Lorenzino de' Medici, who, as the Lorenzo of the play, is repre-
sented as a villain of consummate agility and daring ; prompted
solely by unscrupulous ambition, he plays with amazing skill upon
the licentious nature of his brother the duke and upon Sciarrha's
fiery sense of family honour. Although the way in which Cosmo
yields his betrothed to his friend Pisano fails to convince, the plot,
as a whole, is admirably contrived and well knit, and, in general
effectiveness, ranks with such a play as Beaumont and Fletcher's
Maides Tragedy, to which, probably, it is indebted. Shirley's
favourite device of concentrating the comic element in one elabo-
rate scene is well exemplified here in the mock trial of Depazzi by
his page. Few plays of the period convey so vivid a picture of
the Italy of the renascence on the side of ambition and intrigue.
In the same year, Shirley produced Loves Crueltie, in which
he achieves a rare intensity in the depicting of unlawful passion.
The initial motive which launches the heroine on her downward
career is as natural as it is original. Clarissa's husband has a
friend, Hippolito, who refuses to meet her, lest her beauty should
tempt him to disloyalty to his friend. Piqued by curiosity, she
visits Hippolito at his dwelling, and, without disclosing her identity,
involves him in the intrigue that finally brings disaster on the
whole group. In spite of the disgusting talk of the old rake
Bovaldo, the moral effect of the play is sound and impressive to
a high degree. One leading situation is to be found in the novelle
of Margaret of Navarre and of Cinthio; the rest may be of Shirley's
invention.


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200
Ford and Shirley
The Dukes Mistris (1636) would be better classified as a
tragicomedy, since the four main characters are happily reunited
at the close, and only the two villains die. But the tone of the
drama is serious throughout, except for the comic underplot, which
turns on the assumed preference of the hero's friend Horatio
for ugly women. The distinction of the play lies in the lofty
character of the two heroines, the neglected duchess, to whom the
wandering affections of the duke finally return, and Ardelia, who
resists successfully the solicitations of the duke and, finally, is
married to her betrothed. In the killing of the villain Valerio,
behind the arras, there is an evident reminiscence of the death of
Polonius.
The Polititian, also, might be called a tragicomedy, since
the plot ends happily for most of the persons who claim our
sympathy, and the tragic element is hardly greater than that in
Cymbeline, which, in the figure of the villainous step-mother, it
somewhat resembles. The story is said by Langbaine to resemble
one in the first book of the countess of Montgomery's Urania; but
the question of priority needs further examination. Though not
printed till 1655, this play may have been produced in the Dublin
period (1636—40). Like The Gentleman of Venice (licensed 1639),
the date of the production of which is, also, subject to some
uncertainty, it has prefixed to it interesting ‘small characters' of
the persons, summarising their chief qualities. The plot is laid in
Norway, and moves in an atmosphere which, at times, recalls King
Lear and Hamlet.
In The Cardinall (1641), Shirley believed that he reached his
highest achievement, and, but for The Traytor, which surpasses
it in construction, we should be obliged to agree. Its quality
is indicated when we say that, though strongly reminiscent of
Webster's Dutchesse Of Malfy, it is not altogether unworthy of its
great model. A peculiar change takes place in the fifth act, in
which the cardinal, hitherto somewhat in the background and
scheming on behalf of a favourite nephew, comes forward as a villain
of the deepest dye, seeking in rape and murder the satisfaction of
his own lust and revenge. Another unexpected turn is given at
the close by the discovery that the dying confession of the cardinal,
which the convention of the tragedy of blood leads us to accept
as genuine, is a mere trick contrived to poison the duchess with
a pretended antidote. But the excess of ingenuity, and the double
catastrophe, do not prevent us from understanding the claim that
we have here a tragedy greater than any produced in England


## p. 201 (#219) ############################################

Shirley's Comedies of Manners
201
between its own date and the nineteenth century. In the in-
tensity of its interest, the vitality of its characters, the splendour
of its poetry and the impressive fusion of the great tragic motives
of ambition, love and revenge, it brings to a fitting close the
tremendous file of Elizabethan tragedy.
The comedy of Shirley falls into two main classes, the comedy
of manners and romantic comedy, the latter sometimes described
in the early editions as tragicomedy. The scenes of the comedies
of manners are, with one exception and that only nominal, laid
in London or its immediate neighbourhood, and the time is con-
temporary. One or two are satirical in purpose, others are
dramas of situation or intrigue; but all serve to lay before us a
lively picture of city life in the time of Charles I. Though noble-
men appear occasionally among the dramatis personae, the scenes
are not laid at court, and the society represented is that of the man
about town and the well-to-do citizen. This group of plays, ten in
all, begins with Shirley's first dramatic attempt, Love Tricks: or,
The Schoole of Complement (1625). This somewhat dilettante and
imitative production contains much topical satire, and it is re-
deemed from insignificance by the detached comedy scene which
gives the play its sub-title, and which, in an amusing manner,
parodies the affectations of polite address by the device of a school
where they are taught for a fee to all comers. The Wedding
(1626) shows a great advance in construction, and the serious plot
is skilfully conducted to an effective dénouement. It turns upon
the interruption of a wedding by a charge against the purity of the
bride; and the interval before the lady's character is cleared
serves to test the qualities of the chief persons more deeply than
is usual in this kind of comedy. The farcical underplot, here again,
provides a highly comic scene in the duel between a fat man and
a lean one, both arrant cowards. The Wittie Faire One (1628)
is bright in dialogue and ingenious in construction, with somewhat
conventional characterisation. But the modern reader finds it
hard to accept an ending as happy in which a girl of character
and spirit accepts as husband a rake who has been frightened
into respectability by the preposterous device of all his friends
behaving as if he were dead. The principal comic scene is pro-
vided by a foolish knight receiving lessons in geography from his
tutor. Changes: Or, Love in a Maze (1632) is admirably named,
since the plot is so contrived that the three pairs of lovers attach
and detach their affections as often as possible in the course of five
acts. The farce consists in dressing up a page as a rich widow, who


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202
Ford and Shirley
is wooed by the foolish knight, Sir Gervase Simple. An amusing
piece of satirical literary criticism is introduced in the scene
where Caperwit, the poetaster, discusses the function of adjectives
in verse. The value of Hide Parke (1632) is almost altogether
in the minutely realistic study of fashionable life, especially of
horse racing in the park. The underplot lacks emphasis, the
interest is scattering and the characterisation is sketchy. The
Ball (1632), again, is highly topical, being evidently designed to
dissipate slanderous reports that had been circulated concerning
the newly originated subscription balls, and, perhaps, also to give
the actors opportunity for personating 'divers . . . lords and others
of the court,' as the master of the revels complained they did.
Romantic interest is entirely subordinated to the exposing of a
variety of typical humbugs and fraudulent adventurers. On the
title-page of the original edition, Chapman is named as Shirley's
collaborator ; but, in spite of a strong suggestion of the older
method of Jonson in the handling of the types, it is clear that, in
the play as we have it, Chapman's share is negligible? Though in
execution a lively picture of contemporary manners, The Gamester
(1633), in its main intrigue, is strongly reminiscent of the novella.
It was made, says Sir Henry Herbert, 'out of a plot of the king's,
given him by mee,' but Langbaine found the story both in the
Ducento Novelle of Malespini” and in Margaret of Navarre's
Heptameron8. Though coarser in tone and incident than is usual
with Shirley, the comedy is worked out with great ability, and the
sordid improbability of the Hazard-Wilding plot is, in part, atoned
for by the fine romantic spirit of the underplot of Leonore and
Violante. The making and unmaking of the younger Barnacle as
a ‘roarer' supplies some good farcical scenes. The conduct and
'
influence of the chaste wife, Bellamia, raise The Example (1634) to
a much loftier level than the preceding play. The difficult feat of
rendering a would-be adulterer's conversion plausible is skilfully
accomplished here, though why he should insist, later, on fighting
with the husband is not made very clear. Here, again, Shirley
shows himself critical of current literary style; and, in the character
of Sir Solitary Plot, returns again to the method of the comedy of
humours. The Lady of Pleasure (1635) is frequently regarded as
Shirley's best performance in its kind. The main plot, which turns
on the curing a wife of her desire for a life of fashionable folly, is
thoroughly sound and well carried out. The minor plot of the young
widow Celestina gives occasion for some fine speeches, but is less
1 Cf. ante, chap. II. 2 Part 11, nov. 96. * Day 1, nov. 8.


## p. 203 (#221) ############################################

6
Shirley's Romantic Comeaies
203
convincing in itself. The satire against rakish men about town is
scathing enough ; but, like many satirists, Shirley proves unable
to touch pitch without defiling himself. In The Constant Maid
a play of the Dublin period, the author displays no new or striking
characteristics. It is a conventional comedy of artificial misunder-
standings, supported by an equally conventional underplot and a
masque.
The most numerous group of Shirley's plays is that of romantic
comedy. The scenes of these fourteen dramas are laid in the
Mediterranean countries, usually Italy, and the action, in almost
every case, takes place at court. The list of dramatis personae is
headed by a king or duke, and most of the characters are courtiers.
The nature of the incident is often appropriate to the minal
scene; but the kind of social intercourse pictured, to a large ex-
tent, is that of the court of Charles I. The main plot is usually
serious, and, much oftener than in the comedy of manners, comes
within sight of tragedy, thus accounting for the name 'tragi-
comedy,' by which they are sometimes described in early editions.
There is more stress on character, too, than in the lighter
comedies, and the plot is apt to work up to a more exciting
climax and to make more use of suspense.
The distinction between these two types of comedy was much
less clearly recognised by Shirley at the beginning of his career
than later. Thus, the first two comedies of manners have several
characteristics of the romantic comedy, and, on the other hand,
The Brothers (1626), though laid in Madrid and touching depths
of feeling not usually reached in light comedy, is not a court
comedy, and, in the story of Jacinta and her lovers, deals with
material quite appropriate to the group we have just been dis-
cussing. The main theme is the foiling of the tyrannical father
who seeks a wealthy alliance for his daughter; and this familiar
type is nowhere more unmercifully ridiculed. But the more
serious secondary theme which gives the name to the play, the
enforced rivalry of two brothers for the approval and fortune of
their father, is saved from tragedy only by the resuscitation of the
parent who had pretended death in order to test his elder son.
In The Gratefull Servant (1629), the type of romantic comedy is
thoroughly established. The tone of the main plot is raised to an
uncommon height by the disinterested Foscari, who is willing to be
supposed dead rather than hinder the marriage of his betrothed
lady to the duke. This kind of generosity, which occurs not un-
frequently in Shirley, forms a link between him and Thomas


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204
Ford and Shirley
>
6
Heywood, and has the effect of giving the reader an amiable
impression of the author rather than of convincing him of the
probability of the story. In the disguised heroine Leonora, and,
in the self-important steward Jacomo, one is forcibly reminded of
Twelfth Night. The conversion of the unfaithful husband Lodwick,
in the underplot, is very dubiously managed.
If, as seems probable, Fleay is right in identifying the next play,
The Bird in a Cage (printed 1633) with The Beauties, licensed
in 1633, the number of Shirley's lost plays is reduced to two.
A sarcastic attack on Prynne, then in prison, forms the dedication,
and may have suggested the re-naming of the play. The comedy
contains some novel spectacular elements, such as the birdcage in
which the hero gets himself smuggled into the castle where the
princess is confined, and the play of Danaë, appropriately acted
by the ladies-in-waiting to amuse their mistress. The scene at
the close, where the lovers stand together against the wrath of the
outwitted duke, is not without nobility. The Young Admirall
(1633) won the special approbation of the master of the revels as
being in the beneficial and cleanly way of poetry. It is, indeed,
exceptionally free from coarseness, and, in every respect, an
excellent piece of stagecraft. The interest of plot is very high,
the motives adequate and varied, the characters clearly conceived
and originally presented and the speeches often highly poetical.
It turns on a series of problems, such as love against patriotism,
and conjugal love against filial love. Amusing farce is provided
by a trick played on Pazzarello, a coward who is persuaded that
a witch has made him invulnerable. The source of the play is
stated by Stiefel to be Lope de Vega's Don Lope de Cardona;
and the same scholar has found, in Tirso de Molina's El Castigo
del Pensèque (printed in 1634), a Spanish original for The
Opportunitie (licensed in the same year). This amusing play
turns upon the matrimonial opportunities lost by a travelling
adventurer who arrives in Urbino and is mistaken by everyone
for. the absent son of a prominent courtier. Shirley departs
from his source in the last act by depriving the hero of both
the ladies he had wooed, whereas the Spanish author makes
him lose the duchess, but marries him to one of her ladies. The
point of the plot of The Coronation (1635) lies in the successive
discovery of two brothers of a reigning queen, whose crown thus
shifts from head to head, producing a succession of effective
situations, in which lies the chief merit of the play. It contains
a masque, but no low comedy. This piece was included in the


## p. 205 (#223) ############################################

Shirley's Romantic Comedies
205
second folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's works, but no considerable
part of the play is to be ascribed to any hand but Shirley's. The
main interest of The Royall Master, performed first in Dublin and
printed in 1638, lies not in a somewhat conventional, if skilful,
central intrigue, but in the secondary figure of the young girl
Domitilla, who imagines that the king is in love with her, and is
cured of her infatuation by her royal master, who pretends
to seek her love basely. This situation is taken from the De-
cameron? ; the main plot is stated by Stiefel to be Spanish in
origin? Another Dublin play, licensed in 1640, is The Doubtfull
Heir. The interest here, as in The Coronation, lies in the
surprises of the action, the fortunes of Ferdinand, the lost heir
of Murcia, undergoing a series of most violent changes; while the
charm of the piece is in the constancy of the hero and his
betrothed, which gave the play its original name Rosania, or
Love's Victory. There are two plots of almost equal importance
in The Gentleman of Venice (1639). In one, an interesting contrast
of character is elaborated between the duke's son, supposed to be
the gardener's, and the gardener's son, supposed to be the duke’s.
In the other, a plot of an uncommonly painful nature is handled
with delicacy. The Arcadia, printed in 1640, but, perhaps, per-
formed some years before, is a frank dramatisation of the main
incidents of Sidney's romance, with much elaboration of the
farcical elements. The Humorous Courtier (printed 1640), also
of uncertain date of production, has an ingenious plot, but is
spoiled by the gratuitous coarseness of the scenes dealing with
Orseolo, the pretended misogynist but actual libertine, who gives
the play its name. The main plot turns on the testing of her
courtiers by the duchess of Mantua, who, secretly betrothed to
the duke of Parma, gives out that she means to marry at home,
and enjoys the spectacle of her lords covering themselves
with ridicule in their efforts to gain her hand. The Im-
posture (1640) was considered by Shirley to be in the first rank
of his compositions. It is, indeed, cleverly manipulated, and the
interest is well maintained through a highly complicated plot.
But the devices are lacking in both novelty and probability. An
ambitious favourite, seeking to secure the daughter of the duke of
Mantua for himself, substitutes for her his own discarded mistress
when the son of the duke of Ferrara comes wooing. The low
comedy is supplied by a young coward Bertholdi, who seeks to
ingratiate himself with the gallants by offering to each in turn the
1 Day x, nov. 7. 2 For modern analogues, see Ward, vol. II, p. 116, note 1.


## p. 206 (#224) ############################################

206
Ford and Shirley
hand of his widowed mother, a lady of wit and independence.
The Sisters (1642) was the last play by Shirley performed
before the theatres were closed. It is a lively and amusing
treatment of the theme of the proud and the humble sister. After
the former has been fooled by a captain of bandits masquerading
first as a fortune teller and then as a prince, she is discovered to
be the child of a peasant, and the estates and the real prince go to
her modest rival. The farce is frankly absurd, but, on the stage,
must have been highly amusing. The dedication has an inter-
esting picture of the condition of poets in England just before the
war began, and the prologue contains eulogies of Shakespeare,
Fletcher and Jonson. The Court Secret, the latest of Shirley's
regular dramas, was not acted till after the Restoration. It deals
with the familiar theme, already several times employed by him,
of the hidden heir, and surpasses other works on the subject only
in the extreme intricacy of the plot. Mendoza, the father of the
supposititious prince, is handled with some freshness and humour,
being rendered miserable by the possession of the court secret,'
but without the courage to reveal it. The real and the false
princes are treated with a delicacy of comparison that distinguishes
them clearly from the similarly situated but broadly contrasted
pair in The Gentleman of Venice.
A number of miscellaneous pieces remain to be mentioned.
The most curious of these is the extraordinary hodge-podge written
for the Dublin theatre, and called St Patrick for Ireland (printed
1640). The main plot, derived from the life of the saint, may be re-
garded as something between a chronicle history and a miracle-play;
the love story is tragicomedy ; the figure of Rodamant is farcical.
The device by which a lover gets access to a virtuous girl in the
guise of a god is as old as Josephus and was already familiar on
the English stage. A bracelet making the wearer invisible is used
both in the serious and in the low comedy parts. Though the piece
contains scenes and speeches that might find appropriate enough
place in regular dramas, the effect of the whole is grotesque; and
even the noble figure of St Patrick suffers in dignity from its
patchwork background.
Interesting in a different way is the allegorical drama, Honoria
and Mammon (pub. 1659), an elaboration of a morality, A Con-
tention for Honour and Riches, which Shirley had printed in
1633. The purpose of the 'Moral,' as he calls it, is the exalting
of the scholar as against the courtier and the soldier, and the
exposing of the deceitfulness of riches. In its form, there is


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Shirley's Entertainments
207
much conventional dramatic material; but, on the allegorical side,
it is a more interesting production. The characters, which, in
the earlier form, are largely abstractions, become, in the revision,
types; and this change makes them much more effective for the
pictures of contemporary life in which lies the main value of the
piece.
The Tragedie of Chabot Admirall of France (licensed 1635) is
ascribed on the title-page of the quarto to Chapman and Shirley.
Chapman was dead before the play was acted, and Shirley may
have given it some revision; but, in all essentials, it is evident
that it is the work of the older poet? . Like most of Chapman's
tragedies, it is founded on French history; it is full of his weighty
diction and serious thought; and it is much less well adapted to
the popular stage than we should expect had Shirley had any
considerable share in it.
Besides the masques introduced into nine or ten of his plays,
Shirley has left three separate productions of this class : The
Triumph of Peace (1633), The Triumph of Beauty (printed 1646)
and Cupid and Death (1653). The first of these has already been
referred to as the great entertainment presented by the inns of
court to the king and queen. Except in scale and splendour, it
does not differ notably from most other productions of its kind,
and today it is memorable chiefly as a document in social, rather
than in literary, history. The Triumph of Beauty deals with the
judgment of Paris, and it is introduced by an extensive and obvious
imitation of the rehearsals of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' by Bottom and
his friends in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cupid and Death,
on the familiar fable of the exchange of the weapons of the two
deities and its disastrous results, was written for performance
before the Portuguese ambassador.