author
James Shirley
1596–1666
A leading playwright of the last great phase of English Renaissance drama, he wrote with wit, speed, and an easy feel for the stage. His comedies and tragedies capture courtly style, social games, and the unsettled mood of the years before England's theaters were shut down in 1642.
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About the author
Born in London in September 1596, James Shirley became one of the most successful dramatists of the Caroline era. He studied at Merchant Taylors’ School and later at St John’s College, Oxford, and Catharine Hall, Cambridge, before turning to writing for the stage. He also spent time in Dublin, where he wrote for the theater there before returning to London.
In the 1630s he was a major presence in English drama, producing tragedies, comedies, tragicomedies, and court entertainments. Works such as The Lady of Pleasure, Hyde Park, and The Cardinal helped make him one of the leading playwrights in the decade before Parliament closed the theaters in 1642. Readers often remember him too for the poem beginning "The glories of our blood and state," especially its famous closing thought that death lays all earthly rank low.
After the theaters closed, Shirley worked as a schoolmaster and continued to write and publish. He died in London in October 1666, shortly after the Great Fire. Today he is often seen as one of the last important voices of the long English Renaissance stage, linking the world of Shakespeare’s successors to the upheavals of civil war and its aftermath.