Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/137

 accession of Charles I. Shirley says (Prologue to The Maid's Revenge) that he ‘never affected the ways of flattery; some say I have lost my preferment by not practising that Court sin.’ On the other hand, there can be no doubt that, like other bearers of his name who suffered heavily in the days of the Commonwealth, he entertained strong feelings of personal loyalty towards the king and the royal family (see his jovial cavalier lines Upon the Prince's Birth, 1630). These feelings may naturally have been enhanced by the personal interest taken in at least one of his productions by Charles I (cf. The Gamester. Wood states that he met with especial respect and encouragement from Queen Henrietta Maria, who ‘made him her servant.’ This tallies with the well-known fact that in the dedication to ‘A Bird in a Cage’ (printed 1633) he attacked Prynne, then in the Tower awaiting his sentence for having published ‘Histriomastix’ (November 1632); and in the ‘Commendatory Verses’ prefixed to Ford's ‘Love's Sacrifice,’ printed in the same year, he made another violent onslaught on the ‘voluminously ignorant’ adversary of the stage (cf. , ix. 347). In the next year (1634) Shirley supplied the text of the masque entitled ‘The Triumph of Peace,’ presented at Whitehall on a scale of unexampled magnificence by the gentlemen of the four Inns of Court in response to a hint from high quarters that such a demonstration would be welcome as a reply to Prynne (see the description prefixed to the masque by Shirley; cf. Memorial of the English Affairs, ed. 1853, i. 53–62; Letters and Despatches, ed. Knowles, 1740, i. 177, and p. 207). During this period of his literary life Shirley seems to have enjoyed the favour of various persons of rank, as well as the goodwill of many of his fellow-dramatists and poets, among whom Massinger, Ford, Habington, Randolph, May, and Stapylton wrote commendatory verses on one or more of his plays. He is said to have been a friend of Izaak Walton, but this may have been after his visit, or visits, to Ireland. For, apparently as early as 1636, he betook himself to Dublin, where John Ogilby [q. v.] had in 1635 opened in Werburgh Street the first public theatre ever built in Ireland (, An Historical View of the Irish Stage, 1788, i. 11). The date of Shirley's first visit to Ireland is thought by Mr. Fleay (English Drama, ii. p. 235) to be assignable to 1636, as shown by the pretty (though outspoken) lines addressed by him to Lady B[ishop] and her sister the Lady Dia[na] Curs[on or Curzon] ‘on his departure,’ taken in conjunction with the fact that the London theatres were closed on account of the plague from May 1636 to February 1637, and then again to October of the latter year (, History of the Stage, p. 363). According to a letter from Octavius Gilchrist in Wilson's ‘History of Merchant Taylors' School’ (ii. 673, cited ap. Dyce, vol. i. p. xxxiv n.), Shirley went to Ireland under the patronage of George Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare [q. v.], to whom he dedicated his play of the ‘Royal Master,’ and by whose influence this play was acted in the castle before the lord-deputy (it was also acted at Ogilby's new theatre). Although the dedication merely states that he was encouraged when ‘a stranger’ in Ireland by Kildare's patronage, it is by no means impossible that he made this young nobleman's acquaintance in England, where he had been educated. From the same dedication we further gather that at the time when it was written—in 1638, or possibly in 1637—Shirley's ‘affairs in England’ were ‘hastening his departure’ from Ireland; but if he revisited England, he must speedily have gone back to Dublin. His permanent return to England Mr. Fleay (English Drama, ii. 240–1) considers to be fixed by the mention of it in the dedication to ‘The Opportunity,’ which was published in England after 25 March 1640. If so, it preceded by a few weeks or days the return of Strafford (3 April), to whose recovery from the serious illness, which greatly increased after his arrival in London (see, Letters and Despatches, vol. ii. Appendix, p. 431), Shirley must refer in his verses ‘To the Earl of Strafford upon his Recovery.’ In 1653 Shirley dedicated ‘The Court Secret’ to Strafford's son and heir, William.

Three, or possibly four, of Shirley's plays were produced in Dublin. In the prologue to the ‘Imposture’ (licensed 10 Nov. 1640) he speaks of himself as having been Stranger long to the English scene, for which he now actively recommenced writing. The tragedy which (in the dedication) he claimed to be ‘the best of his flock’—viz. ‘The Cardinal’—was licensed on 25 Nov. 1641; it was followed by ‘The Sisters,’ licensed 26 April 1642, in the prologue to which he exclaims desolately that ‘London has gone to York;’ the next, ‘The Court Secret,’ is stated in the title-page of the edition of 1653 to have been never acted, ‘but prepared for the scene at the Black-friers.’ In September 1642 stage-plays were suppressed by the first ordinance of the parliament.

According to Wood, Shirley was ‘hereupon forced to leave London, and so, consequently, his wife [Frances] and children,