James Shirley dominated the last generation of English Renaissance drama with an industrious fluency unapproached by any other playwright during the reign of Charles I. Others, notably John Ford, wrot...
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In the following excerpt, Forsythe enumerates the dominant characteristics of Shirley's works, describing him as a courtly playwright concerned with moral justice. He also notes that Shirley wa...
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In the following essay, Tomlinson compares Shirley's Hyde Park to a play written by aristocratic women to illuminate the issue of female subjectivity. She finds in Shirley's female chara...
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In the following essay, Orgel interprets Jacobean and Caroline masques as a mirror reflecting the crown as it wanted to be seen. He asserts that for Charles I the masque was an expression of the stren...
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In the following essay, Butler challenges the notion that Caroline masques were merely dramatic spectacles, arguing instead that court masques were one aspect of Charles I's government by conse...
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In the following essay, McGee discusses the political and financial details of a performance of The Triumph of Peace produced by the City of London, noting that it reflects and illuminates tense relat...
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In the following essay, Sensabaugh discusses The Lady of Pleasure in light of the courtly cult of platonic love popularized by Queen Henrietta Maria. Tracing the theme of platonic love in the relation...
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In the following essay, Huebert constructs a version of the original production of The Lady of Pleasure, including blocking, casting, and set design. In doing so, he highlights Shirley's use of...
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In the following excerpt, Huebert characterizes The Lady of Pleasure as a dramatization of decadence, regarding which Shirley's own stance is unclear.
The first reader of The Lady of Pleasure t...
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In the following excerpt, Shirley's early twentieth-century biographer, Arthur Nason describes The Cardinal as a romantic tragedy and one of the playwright's best works, noting especiall...
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In the following essay, Belsey examines The Cardinal in the contexts of Renaissance revenge tragedy and changing perceptions of political authority.
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Shirley's tragedy, The Cardinal, was perfo...
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In the following excerpt, Lucow downplays topical analyses of The Cardinal and instead emphasizes its debt to the revenge-tragedy tradition. Lucow contends that although Shirley considered The Cardina...
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In the following essay, Morton contends that scholarly interpretations of Shirley's plays have been limited by the tendency to focus on the playwright as a transitional figure between the Renai...
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In the following excerpt, Yearling emphasizes Shirley's simple style in The Cardinal, but cautions against reading the play as a stripped-down revenge tragedy. Though Yearling discounts a stron...
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In the following excerpt, Butler examines the relationship between class and politics in Shirley's comedies, particularly as illustrated through the world of manners, drawing a close connection...
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In the following excerpt, Burner discusses the relationship between theater and audience in the development of new plays, noting that Shirley was among a select coterie of playwrights writing for priv...
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In the following excerpt, Clark portrays Shirley as socially ambitious and loyal to Charles I, absolute monarchy, and class hierarchy.
Shirley's Reverence for Degree
“I never affected th...
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In the following review, Billington explores director Barry Kyle's production of Hyde Park at the Swan Theatre as a successful evocation of several literary periods: the Edwardian era of the Bl...
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In the following review, Potter finds Shirley's Hyde Park banal and overly slight, despite fine performances by the actresses in the three lead female roles.
A play written for the spring openi...
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Critical Review by Edwin Wilson
Wilson, Edwin. “Shirley and Shakespeare.” The Wall Street Journal (13 July 1987): 20.
In the following review, Wilson admires the Swan Theatre production...
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In the following essay, Levin emphasizes the importance of interpreting the action of Hyde Park as a unified play rather than as three disconnected plots.
Shirley's Hyde Park is one of the best...
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In the following excerpt, Bowers argues that Shirley's works transcend the decadence into which revenge tragedy had fallen in his time.
The dramatists of the fourth period of revenge tragedy in...
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In the following essay, Lucow examines the concept of honor in The Lady of Pleasure and The Cardinal.
Shirley is best known for two plays: a comedy, The Lady of Pleasure, and a tragedy, The Cardinal (...
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In the following essay, Venuti examines allusions to Charles I's ban prohibiting the gentry from living in London in The Triumph of Peace.
Topical allusions can be said to anchor a literary tex...
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In the following essay, Spinrad argues that Shirley was not merely an imitator of well-established Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic conventions.
The scholar attempting to do a critical examination of...
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In the following essay, Clark argues that Shirley's plays reinforce aristocratic values.
Shirley's Reverence for Degree
“I never affected the ways of flattery: some say I have los...
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In the following essay, Burks discusses the political implications of sexual violence in The Cardinal.
When it was performed in the winter of 1641, The Cardinal, James Shirley's play about a we...
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In the essay below, Robins provides an overview of Shirley's life and literary career.
There is something piteous and theatrical in the deaths of James and Frances Shirley as they were recorded...
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In the following essay, Sensabaugh examines Shirley's endorsement of Platonic love in The Lady of Pleasure, particularly focusing on the playwright's contrast of idealized, virtuous love...
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In the following excerpt, Forker maintains that The Cardinal shows brilliant plotting and complex manipulation of the conventions of the revenge tragedy, yet fails to resolve the moral and ethical pro...
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In the following essay, McGrath argues that Shirley's works evidence a distrust of language that limits character development.
From the first of James Shirley's plays to the last, the wo...
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In the following essay, Morton analyzes Shirley's use of deceptions, tricks, and misunderstandings in his plays to convey conflicts between various social groups in Caroline England.
The tempta...
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In the following essay, Levin studies Shirley's use of plot structure to develop themes in his play Hyde Park.
Shirley's Hyde Park is one of the best known and most widely admired of tha...
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In the following essay, Wertheim discusses Shirley's technique of mirroring the amorous competition in the racing and gambling competitions in Hyde Park.
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The realistic comedies of James Shirl...
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In the following essay, Cogan examines Shirley's use of plot in his depictions of licit and illicit love.
Since the 1920's, critics of James Shirley's dramatic comedies have been ...
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In the following essay, Huebert reconstructs the first staging of The Lady of Pleasure.
The first performance of The Lady of Pleasure took place in late October or early November, 1635. The play was l...
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James Shirley
