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Updated: June 12, 2025
Gerard Langbaine tells us that Shirley left at his death some plays in manuscript: I have little doubt, or rather no doubt at all, that Captain Underwit is one of them. In the notes I have pointed out several parallelisms to passages in Shirley's plays; and occasionally we find actual repetitions, word for word.
His name was mentioned and some interest in his writings was awakened at the close of the next century by Winstanley and by Langbaine, but Oldys, the celebrated antiquary, was the first person who seriously endeavoured to trace the incidents of his life. Dr.
He is said to have been originally a jesuit, and to have had connexions in consequence thereof, with such persons of distinction in London as were of the Roman Catholic persuasion, Langbaine says, his acquaintance with the nobility was more than with the mules, and he had a greater propensity to rhiming, than genius to poetry.
There are extant of this author's, four plays, besides other poems, all which were printed together in 1651, to which are prefixed above fifty copies of commendatory verses by the most eminent wits of the university. Langbaine gives the following account of his plays; Ordinary, a Comedy, when and where acted is uncertain.
Langbaine says, that this is so diverting and so true a comedy, that even foreigners, who are not in general kind to the wit of our nation, have extremely commended it. The History of Timon of Athens the Manhater; acted at the duke's theatre, printed at London 1678, in 4to.
In Military Discipline he has published the Soldier's Accidence and Grammar, 4to. 1635 Besides these the second book of the first part of the English Arcadia is said to be wrote by him, in so much that he may be accounted, says Langbaine, "if not Unus in omnibus, at least a benefactor to the public, by those works he left behind him, which without doubt perpetuate his memory."
nec quarta loqui persona laboret. Mr. Langbaine professes himself ignorant from whence the plot is taken, neither can he find the name of any such Prince as Alaham, that reigned in Ormus, where the scene lyes, an island situated at the entrance of the Persian Gulph, which is mentioned by Mr. Herbert in his account of Ormus. Mustapha, a Tragedy, printed in folio 1633.
He was, says Langbaine, a very close student, and much addicted to poetry; a proof of which he has given to the world, in those plays which he has bequeathed to posterity, and which in that age were well esteemed, both by the court, and by the university.
Thomas Coxeter, I found that he had bought my Langbaine of a bookseller who was a great collector of plays and poetical books. His autobiography shows that he soon restored his literary losses. His patron, Lord Oxford, for whom he afterwards worked as librarian, was anxious to buy everything that was rare.
A poet not long dead was often obliged to study in the fields, and write upon scraps of paper, which he occasionally borrowed; but his case was poverty, and absolute want. Langbaine observes of our author, that he was a general scholar, and a tolerable linguist, as his several translations from Lucian, Erasmus, Texert, Beza, Buchanan, and other Latin and Italian authors sufficiently manifest.
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