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132 portray no conflict of passions, no resolution taking shape, but present in a style less rich and fanciful than Fletcher's, less thrilling than Webster's, less declamatory than Massinger's, but with a grave intensity of its own, some fixed phase of a high-flown not to say morbid sentiment. And if the sentiments are unreal the characters are more so. Ford's dramatis personæ are not creatures of flesh and blood. The best resemble delicate wax-works, touched with a pale and feverish beauty at times by the intensity of the sentiment which the poet puts into their mouths.

James Shirley (1596-1666), who is generally reckoned the last of the Elizabethans, is a dramatist of lighter build but more varied talent than Ford. Educated at Merchant Taylor's School and Cambridge, he seems to have turned to play-writing only after he had been in orders, and—on his conversion to Romanism—a schoolmaster. From the year following Fletcher's death to the close of the theatres he was a fertile author of tragedies, comedies, and masques, and a special favourite of the King and Queen. He prepared The Triumph of Peace, which was presented at great cost by the Inns of Court on the occasion of Prynne's attack upon the Queen. He visited Dublin at the invitation of the Earl of Kildare, and some of his plays, including the Mystery of St Patrick for Ireland, were written for