"With old plays you have so long been cloyed": James Shirley's influence on Aphra Behn

Abstract

This article emphasises the unrecognised popularity of the Caroline playwright James Shirley’s drama on the Restoration stage, demonstrating that – after Fletcher – Shirley, Shakespeare and Jonson pegged pretty level in the 1660s when it came to revivals. Aphra Behn’s use of Shirley’s The Lady of Pleasure (printed 1637) in her later play, The Lucky Chance (performed 1686), raises questions about why neither it, nor Shirley’s popular The Bird in a Cage (printed 1633) were revived in the Restoration. Behn must have been reading Shirley in the 1680s since there are direct verbal echoes in her play, arguing for a direct engagement with earlier drama. Scholars repeatedly connect The Bird in a Cage to Behn because Shirley’s playlet leaves room for a lesbian desire which reverberates also within Behn’s poetry and other drama. Shirley and Behn also share an interest in the politics of transactional sex, themes that run through both Shirley plays and also in so much of Behn’s writing. The Lucky Chance follows both Shirley plays in showing the negotiations necessary for women to remain both independent and virtuous in a system stacked against them.