SOURCE: Potter, Lois. “Caroline Courtships.” Times Literary Supplement (1 May 1987): 464.

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 opening of Hyde Park in 1632—comedy of manners with a dash of local colour—must have seemed an appropriate opening too for the new season at the Swan. But Shirley's play Hyde Park poses more problems than one might expect. It isn't very funny. Nor, though written in verse, is it poetic (Lord Bonvile's little aria, “Lady, you are welcome to the spring”, on which John Carlisle lavishes his most dulcet tones, is a rare example of the “compliment” for which the author's contemporaries admired him). The dialogue is chiefly characterized by a rather colourless realism, with much of the vagueness, hesitation and banality of ordinary conversation. This...