His "Love's Tricks" was licensed in 1624-1625,--"a silly play," writes Mr. Pepys in 1667. Shirley was prolific; his "Witty Fair One" (acted 1628) is thought one of his best comedies. These dramas have a touch of the modern; we hear of "balls," a new name then for dancing parties. In "The Lady of Pleasure" (1635) Lady Bornwell's contempt for the country life and for country gentlemen, and her determination to spend her husband's fortune on the gaieties of the Court, are amusing, and we expect her to be a Lady Teazle. But, despite her husband's stratagem of beating her at her own game, and the humours of the nephew whom she has brought from Oxford, the piece can hardly be read with enthusiastic delight. It is deemed Shirley's masterpiece in comedy, and preludes to the comic drama of the Restoration and the Revolution of 1688. Dryden expresses extreme contempt for both Hey wood and Shirley; it is to be feared that his own plays are now no more popular than theirs. After residing at Dublin under the great Earl of Strafford, and producing plays at the Viceregal Court, and after insulting in an ironic dedication of "The Bird in a Cage," the Puritan Prynne, who had been most cruelly punished for allusions in his work against the stage ("Histriomastix"), Shirley returned to London. His "The Cardinal" is imitated from Webster's "Duchess of Malfi," and with "The Traitor" is reckoned (though Shirley preferred "The Cardinal"), "the best of his flock" in tragedy. Pepys (1662) writes "there is no great matter in it," but Pepys's dramatic criticisms are no great matter. In 1642 came the shutting up of the theatres, and Shirley, after seeing the wars under his patron, the Duke of Newcastle, returned to his old profession as a schoolmaster. He wrote a preface (1647) to some hitherto unprinted plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, commending their stage as a school of moral discipline, "In this silence of the stage thou hast a liberty to read these inimitable plays". In 1659 Shirley published his "Contention of Ajax and Ulysses," containing the noble lines which embalm his memory:-- The glories of our blood and state. Are shadows, not substantial things. His Bid me no more good night, because 'Tis dark, must I away? is also a pretty piece, like his "Song" (attributed wrongly to Carew). Shirley's works were often acted at the beginning of the Restoration, but he refused to write more dramas. The shock of the great fire of 1666 is said to have caused the deaths, on the same day, of himself and of his wife. The blank verse of Shirley is seldom distinguished. His numerous works suffer somewhat because they come at the end of a long period in which talent like his, with defects of taste often greater than his, have satiated and wearied all but the special student and enthusiastic devotee of the drama. The minor stars in the galaxy of playwrights almost defy enumeration.