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I+- THE NATURE OF EVIL IN THE TRAGEDIES OF JAMES SHIRLEY Forrest Edward Black, Jr, A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY June 1975 BOWLING GREEN Sffift UNIVERSITY LIBRARY la ABSTRACT A close reading of James Shirley's five tragedies (The Maid's Revenge, Love's Cruelty, The Traitor, The Politician, and The Cardinal) reveals overriding concern with causes and effects of worldly evil. In all instances an. agent of evil infects both fellow conspirators and arch-enemies, causing great chaos before he and those he has infected are finally eliminated. The agent is always portrayed as Satanic, as Shirley demonstrates through imagery and diction. Yet his motives are always worldly, associating him with Machiavellianism. Evil is spread into the world through the villain and his accomplice, both of whom always meet death eventu­ ally, suggesting that evil has tragic effects on persons other than those whom it is intended to destroy. The last three tragedies show evil's advance from the private into the public sector; whereas in the first two plays love occasioned difficulties, in these chaos is caused through political ambition. This suggests Shirley believes political ambition causes greater problems because it affects more people. In all cases a character close to the evil tries to combat it with evil means and dies in his efforts, suggesting that Machiavellianism even as a means in a good cause is unacceptable. Finally, Shirley shows man is responsible for his own actions by never allowing a character legitimately to blame fate for his falling into evil. Shirley examines evil to establish its nature and thereby warn his audience against evil, its causes, methods, and consequences. ib TABLE OP CONTENTS PREFACE ....................................... i INTRODUCTION............. I CHAPTER ONE................................... 16 CHAPTER TWO................................... 53 CHAPTER THREE .............................. 75 CHAPTER FOUR ........................ 114 CHAPTER FIVE................................. 148 CHAPTER SIX.................................. l6l AFTERWORD.................................... 186 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .................... 187 1C PREFACE This is a study of the causes and effects of evil In the tragedies of James Shirley. In all five tragedies—The Maid’s Revenge (1626)., Love *S Cruelty (1631), The Traitor (1631), The Politician (1639)» and The Cardinal (l64l)—an agent of evil infects both fellow conspirators and arch-enemies and causes great chaos before he and those he has infected are finally eliminated. Because Shirley used these elements in all five works, it logically follows that he was vitally interested in the nature of evil in the world. By examining the causes and effects of evil, by looking at those figures who spread evil and those who contract it, one may come to understand what Shirley thought to be the nature of evil. Perhaps the most obvious technique Shirley uses to portray the evil agent is—by means of symbolic action* character portrayal, and imagery—to give him a Satanic quality. This Satanic figure’s evil purpose is supplemented by his evil means of achievement, a method that was unmis­ takably identified in the minds of Shirley’s audience with Machiavellianism, especially since Shirley makes clear that this Satanic agent’s motives are never supranatural (i.e., not literally Mephistophelian) but always worldly. In this way, Shirley is able not only to account for the introduction 11 of evil into the world but also to combine two typical villain-types of his day, the Satanic and the Machiavellian, to offer an unusual view of the traditional evil agent. The two conventional types of villain in Renaissance drama were either, like Marlowe’s Mephistophllis, in quest of a human soul and therefore clearly Satanic; or, like Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, clearly a political self-seeker characterized in purely worldly terms. Apart from Shirley, no dramatist of the time consistently combined the two types to create a villain. Having once established the form which evil takes in Shirley’s tragedies, I shall show its effects on other characters. Included in every tragedy is a character less evil than the villain but weak enough to come totally under that villain’s Influence. Their conspiracy against a third character is the beginning of the spread of evil into the world of the play. The accomplice never fails, along with the villain himself, to meet his death, a circumstance which suggests that evil has tragic effects on persons other than those whom it is intended to destroy, Shirley’s Catholicism is probably in large part responsible for his view that participating in evil yields one no more than he deserves and that there is,, therefore, a moral order to the universe. Shirley’s last three tragedies show the advance of evil from the private into the public sector. Whereas in The Maid’s Revenge and Love’s Cruelty the evil grows out of ill difficulties in matters of love, the theme of .political ambition becomes increasingly important in the last three. And although love problems play a part in all five plays, Shirley seems to indicate that political ambition and the evil attendant upon it cause greater problems because they affect more people. In every case, there is a character close to the evil who tries to combat it} and though his cause is good, he adopts evil methods. In this way he becomes a Machiavellian himself} and because he always meets his death through his efforts, Machiavellianism, even in a good cause, is shown to be an unacceptable means of countering evil in this world. The characters who survive the effects of evil are either those who abjure it entirely or those, as in The Politician, who use virtuous methods to combat it. The aforementioned worldly motives of the Satanic villain invariably arise from problems of love or political ambition. The villain whose evil springs from difficulties in love develops from a normal human being into a villain. But the ambitious politician undergoes no such development. Apparently Shirley assumed an implicit evil in the Italianate / Caroline political world, an evil that is present from the start, whereas in the matter of love he believed it necessary to account for an evil which was not implicit but might evolve under given circumstances. iv Finally, I shall attempt to show that evil is a matter for which man is responsible and that man can control his fate. Shirley never allows a character legitimately to blame fate for his falling into evil ways.^ He makes clear that such a character must bear ultimate responsibility for his acts and that any attempt to do otherwise is a sign of that character’s personal weakness. What should emerge from this study as a whole is that Shirley was indeed consistently and actually concerned with evil. Instead of using it merely as a theatrical device, 2 as Muriel Bradbrook charges, Shirley examined the causes and effects of evil to establish its nature and thereby warn his audience against evil, its methods, and its consequences. Shirley’s tragedies reflect the ascendance of free will in the religious controversy of the time. Shirley holds the position which Erasmus had maintained. Erasmus had "insisted on man’s free will and rational power of choice and capacity for good," the opposite of which was Insisted upon by Martin Luther and his adherents. See Douglas Bush, Prefaces to Renaissance Literature (New York» Norton, 1965)» p. 47.'. 2 Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (1935t rpt. Cambridge Unlv. Press, 19^), p. 261^ I INTRODUCTION Generally regarded as the last of the Elizabethan dramatists, James Shirley is a "link between Elizabethan and Restoration comedy as well as one of the last eminent re­ presentatives of poetic staige tragedy and tragicomedy in the English drama.Coming at the end of the greatest dramatic achievement in the history of the English language, Shirley must inevitably compete with a race of giants. Nevertheless, in the seventy years of his life, Shirley managed, through the thirty-one plays that have survived, to establish a reputation which, though it does not place him next to Shakespeare or Marlowe, assures him a place among the lead­ ing dramatists of the English Renaissance. Shirley was born on 13 September 1596 in the parish of 2 St. Mary Woolchurch. Though A. W. Ward states that he was 1 Robert Forsythe, The Relation of Shirley’s Plays to Elizabethan Drama (191*H rpt. New York» Benjamin Blom, 19^5)» P. 31.- 2 The information on Shirley’s life is taken primarily from the books by Forsythe, mentioned above, and Adolphus William Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature (London» Macmillan, 1875T7 They contain clear, concise sketches of the essential biographical information regarding Shirley. For an in-depth account of Shirley’s life, the best source is the first five chapters of Arthur Nason, James Shirley Dramatist (New York» Arthur H. Nason, 1915). 2 not of noble birth, he is designated on the title-pages of his plays as ”James Shirley, gent.” Frederick Gard Fleay conjectures that Shirley was the son of the dramatist Henry Shirley, but this is pure -s.pecuilation. At any rate, Shirley was admitted to Merchant Taylor’s School on 4 October 1608, and in the same year he was enrolled at St. John’s College, Oxford. For some reason Shirley left Oxford without taking a degree and entered Cambridge as a member of Catharine Hall. The reason for his leaving Oxford is unknown, though Forsythe says it seems to have ’been because of intervention of his friend and patron, Dr. William Laud. Forsythe says Laud intervened because of something to do with a “mole or similar mark upon his /Shirley’s/ left cheek”^ but goes no farther than this.

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