SOURCE: Cogan, Nathan. “James Shirley's The Example (1634): Some Reconsiderations.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 17, no. 2 (spring 1977): 317-31.

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 highly favorable in their judgments about Hyde Park (1632) and The Lady of Pleasure (1635), often treating them as the “best” comedies by the chief playwright under Charles I and, more often than not, treating them as representative of the growth and development of “comedy of manners.”¹ Typically, Edgar Chapman not only regards Shirley as the inventor of comedy of manners, but also views Hyde Park as his “best comedy of manners,”² attempting perhaps in the latter judgment to balance the more frequent twentieth-century view of The Lady of Pleasure as Shirley's “best” comedy,³ or even “best comedy of manners.” In the 1930's Alfred...