The .Relations of Shirley's Plays to the Elizabethan Drama is
the subject of a dissertation by Dr. Robert Stanley Forsythe (Humphrey Milford for the Columbia University Preen, 8s. 6d. net). Shirley belonged to the very tail-end of the great Elizabethan tradition, and was not only writing when the theatres were closed, but lived on into the Restoration ; for it will be remembered that he and his wife were driven out of their house by the Great Fire, when, "being in a manner over- come with affrightments, dieconsolations, and other miseries, occasion'd by that fire and their losses, they both died within the compass of a natural day." The work is in the main an elaborate analysis of each of Shirley's plays in turn, and au attempt to show how largely that not very interesting writer borrowed, alike in incident and treatment, from his predecessors and contemporaries.
Previous page
