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1 results

  • Chapter 12 - Frames without Pictures

  • from Part IV - Making It New: Frames and Forms
  • Edited by Eoin Price, University of Edinburgh, Harry Newman, Royal Holloway, University of London
  • Book:
    Reprints and Revivals of Renaissance Drama
    Published online:
    06 May 2026
    Print publication:
    25 June 2026, pp 218-239

  • Summary

    In 1646, when the London theatres were closed, James Shirley published a collection titled Poems &c. Shirley’s et cetera included “Prologues and Epilogues Written to severall Playes Presented in this Kingdom, and else-where.” While the paratexts in this volume are for plays that had already been performed, Shirley’s Poems offers the first or only known publication for some prologues, for instance, for Shirley’s The Doubtful Heir (first published in 1652; also included in Six New Plays, 1653). This chapter explores how the dramatic epitexts in Shirley’s Poems make meaning without the full text of their play. Shirley reveals himself to be Ben Jonson’s heir and a poet-playwright in the classical tradition. These paratexts no longer frame plays; rather, they act as a threshold that opens into Shirley’s dramatic oeuvre and makes it the centerpiece of, to use Richard Helgerson’s term, Shirley’s “self-crowned laureateship.”