The Constant Maid by James Shirley tells the tale of a recently impoverished young gentleman who seeks to marry the daughter of a rich widow. Throughout this five act play, tricks of deception and secret plots are enacted by characters in hopes of getting what they want.
In Act I, Shirley introduces Hartwell, a bankrupt nobleman, and his servants. Due to his financial state all his companions, other than his loyal servant Close, leave him. The scene shifts to Hornet, who is trying to persuade the rich widowed Mistresse Bellamy to marry him and dissuade her from letting Hartwell marry Mistresse Frances, her daughter.
In Act II, Nurse expresses to Close her desire for Frances to marry Startup, a witless countryman. Playfaire admits his desire to be with Neece and also believes Hartwell should pursue Mistresse Bellamy. Separately, Startup appears and expresses his intentions of marrying Mistresse Frances. The setting changes to Hornet at home along with a doctor, who is truly the cousin of Playfaire in disguise (named Cousen). They are discussing Neece’s condition of ‘madness,’ when she enters acting crazed. Hornet is tricked once again when Playfaire’s servants enter disguised as lords, summoning him to the King. Back at Mistresse Bellamy’s home, Nurse schemes to convince Mistresse Frances that Hartwell is actually in love with her mother, so she will favour Startup. Despite Mistresse Frances' dismay when overhearing Hartwell’s confession to her mother, she blames and resents Startup who exposed her to the confession instead.
In Act III, Nurse and Startup discuss Startup’s plans to seduce Mistresse Bellamy. Close joins in on this conversation and deceitfully offers his aid in getting Startup and Mistresse Frances together. When Hartwell appears, both Nurse and Startup flee. Close tells Hartwell everything and together they make a plan to help Hartwell win over Mistresse Frances.
In Act IV, Close and a half-naked Startup stand in a field with Hartwell in pursuit. Close has Startup hide just before Hartwell enters. They have a heated discussion in relation to their schemes not going as planned. Once Hartwell storms off, Close and Startup get arrested by Constable and Watchmen. The next scene shifts to Mistresse Bellamy, Mistresse Frances, and Nurse. They find both Startup and Hartwell gone, and Hartwell’s clothes left behind. This prompts confusion which they have little time to ponder before Countrey-man and states his connection to Startup. Startup has prior marital obligations to attend to due to the pregnancy of Countrey-man’s daughter. Countrey-man sets out to find Startup, and Mistresse Bellamy and Mistresse Frances argue. In the final scene, a masque is performed at Justice Clements’ house to fool Hornet, which he is then convinced is all a dream. This masque aids in Playfaire’s plan to free Neece, which is accomplished.
Act V begins with the arrest of Hartwell. He is accused of murdering Startup, and he gives a false confession to murder. The setting shifts to Hornet’s home where he realises that Neece is gone and possibly married, which would leave him penniless. Cousen enters offering help in retrieving Neece, however, a fee is requested for the assistance. The play concludes with Hartwell’s name being cleared and Mistresse Bellamy giving her blessing to Frances and Hartwell. Startup is dragged back to the country to marry the pregnant Countrey-man’s daughter. Hornet realises he has been duped, left with no money, and is once again rejected by Mistresse Bellamy.
In 1636, Sir Thomas Wentworth invited Shirley to relocate from London to Dublin and work as a playwright for the Werburgh Street Theatre (more about this in the author’s biography). However, it is widely assumed that Shirley was drawn to write in Dublin because artistic censorship was less rigorous. The recurring themes of deception and loyalty, infidelity, and social class in his Irish writings ultimately support these claims. The themes Shirley integrates into the majority of the works from his Irish canon are representative of contemporary political, social, and historical events. Most of his plays, like The Constant Maid, centre on intricate schemes of deception and social stratification. Shirley's contributions to the theatre of his day were, as Richard Morton describes, “romantic comedy with valid social comment, and realistic comedy with a firm dramatic focus.”(Morton 240). Constant Maid fits into the former, despite the fact that his realms of lavish and immoral fashion are less common. Shirley needed to talk about topics that were particularly important to his new Irish audience if he wanted to connect with them. Ireland was straining to establish its status in the three-Kingdom state ruled by King Charles I at the time The Constant Maid was written, demonstrating contextually how Shirley's writings were influenced by the monarchy's relationship and jurisdiction over Ireland (Williams 48). As a result, he used themes of loyalty and deception to weave political criticism on the monarchy into The Constant Maid.
Deception & Loyalty: It has also been argued the tone and purpose of Shirley's plays changed throughout the course of his career, and this is especially apparent in his Irish plays. The presence of the theme of deception throughout Shirley's work, however, remained notably consistent. The Constant Maid contains an intricate network of deception such as gulling, masquerade, disguise and self-deception. Alongside deceit, another prominent theme in Shirley's Irish canon is loyalty. The Constant Maid and The Royal Master are both comedies by the author that explore the question of who you can and should trust in both a social and political context. A sociopolitical commentary made out of a court scene with actors posing as the King and judges of high positions further explores the topic of loyalty in The Constant Maid. Correspondingly, this theme is pertinently evident through the character of Close, who has a social connection to the majority of characters in the play.
Marriage & Infidelity: In The Constant Maid, marriage plays a crucial role in the social interactions between male and female characters. Elaine Kalmar comments most of Shirley's comedies deal specifically with the "problems that result from the custom of enforced marriage, that is, the custom of arranging marriages without the regard to love or compatibility” (Kalmar 1). Intertwining this theme of enforced marriage into the Shirleian comedy comes with a spectrum of unusual social relations, including intricate adultery, incestuous pursuits, and homoerotic tensions throughout the play.
Social Class & Politics: It has been widely hypothesised that Shirley's plays frequently contained undertones of socio-political criticism of the Monarchy and lives of the upper middle class. With the manipulation of social affectations and persistent emphasis on wealth and appearance throughout the play, The Constant Maid provides interpretive humorous commentary on the pursuit of elitism through themes of ambition and social class.
The first mention of The Constant Maid was in the Stationers’ Register in London, entered alongside another of Shirley’s works, St. Patrick for Ireland, on the 28th of April 1640. St. Patrick for Ireland has garnered more scholarly attention in recent decades, mainly due to its cliche and general absurdity, while The Constant Maid has much less scholarly criticism and attention drawn to it compared to Shirley’s other works. Some confusion and disagreement has arisen in scholarly circles regarding the exact date of publication. There are theories postulating much earlier dates of the creation of The Constant Maid by Shirley, as early as the beginning of the 1630s. However, while there is no indication that the work was printed before 1640, it is likely that it was performed in Dublin before its first known publication date. Its next edition was published in 1657, once again alongside St. Patrick for Ireland. The confusion surrounding the authenticity of the publication information perhaps mainly stems from its 1661 edition, where The Constant’s Maid title was switched out for an alternative title, Love Will Finde Out the Way. This 1661 edition was published by James Cottrel for Samuel Speed, with the credits of its authorship going to a ‘J. B.’ rather than Shirley. This edition is what sparks most of the confusion around the spuriousness of the piece. Seemingly accrediting the piece to another author and the change in the title are genuine evidentiary points to cause confusion and mistrust. However, there is evidence also to support that these two are most likely the same piece, written by Shirley and not by this ‘J. B.’. These two alternative titles appeared alongside one another in the 1661 edition and both continue to be almost equally connected and interchangeable to the play to this day. Shirley’s death in 1666 perhaps sparked the return once again to publishing The Constant Maid in its 1667 edition, for the Nursery Playhouse in Hatton-Garden, where it reverted back to having Shirley’s name in its by-line. However, this edition betrays many differences from its earlier iterations. Almost 200 years later, the 1833 edition, showcased in The Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirley in six volumes published in London, shows the renewed interest in the play and Shirley as an Early Modern playwright and poet. Our 2023 edition aims to modernise and preserve this text in a digital documentary format.
There is not much documentation about the early reception of The Constant Maid by the public, as the play itself may have not sold as much as Shirley’s other works produced around that time (Riemer 147). It should be noted that The Constant Maid along with a play published at the same time titled St. Patrick for Ireland, was not published by Shirley’s normal publishers for the previous seven years. There is also no documentation of either of these plays being produced and performed in London, their only performances being in Dublin (Parlin 44). This distinction is important in understanding the popularity of the play, in contrast with Shirley’s other works performed in Ireland. While writing plays for an Irish audience, Shirley did not necessarily gain favour with the people of Ireland. Most of his audience for these plays consisted of the smaller English population in Dublin during that time (Williams 70). Some scholars such as Justine Isabella Williams argue that while Shirley attempted to lure in the Irish population with his plays written for the Dublin stage, he was “disillusioned by the reception his work received in Dublin, and that he was not hesitant about showing his discontent” (Williams 71). Shirley’s works seem to have satisfied the audiences of London, but not the population of the Dublin theatres.
Though his move to Dublin was called a “coup” in one source, it was not an ultimately fruitful venture (Morash 4). Shirley wrote his complaints about theatre in Dublin into the prologue of his premiere for St. Patrick for Ireland, expressing dissatisfaction with the lack of interest in theatre among the Irish public (Lublin 108). Whatever impact he may have wished to impart on the theatrical scene of 1630s Dublin was not well received nor was it long lasting. Shirley further elaborated his complaints of producing theatre in Dublin in several other prologues, some of which we have in full today (Lublin 110). Despite his complaints and rebukes to his Dublin audience, the Werburgh Street Theatre did not survive long past the end of Shirley’s residence due to the shifting political scene and lack of support by the Irish public. Then, shortly after Shirley’s departure from Dublin, the royalists lost the English Civil War which led to the London theatres being closed and Shirley was left out of work producing little theatre for the remainder of his life.
As an early modern playwright, Shirley left somewhat of a footprint as his plays were performed and republished well after his death. Shirley produced a fairly large body of work over his career. His privileged position was in part due to his status as the most prolific Caroline era playwright (Britannica). He has garnered a moderate amount of attention from academics over the years; most recently, there have been critical scholarly editions of several of his individual plays and particular interest shown to his time in Ireland. Oxford University Press is also currently working to produce a comprehensive collection of Shirley’s works. His poetry has also received scholarly treatment. However, The Constant Maid has received very little specific attention and is generally a small section in a broader consideration of Shirley’s Irish plays. St. Patrick for Ireland, for example, has been the target of much scholarly discussion as a confused and clichéd work
To understand more of the context of the time and the tradition Shirley was embedded in, a short background on the characteristics of early modern drama as it pertains to playwriting is necessary. Much of what a modern audience understands of early modern drama comes from interaction with Shakespeare’s plays in their many extant forms. His name is strongly associated with the period and he established many of the conventions that later playwrights, such as James Shirley, built their works on. Shakespeare is not the beginning or end of it all, though. In Shirley’s post-Shakespearean period, referred to as the Caroline era, the preferences had shifted somewhat. For example, the masque appeared noticeably in four of Shakespeare’s plays, but it became a main feature in Shirley’s time. The masque was now its own, central piece, not just a supplement contained within a larger theatrical work.
Another standard feature of early modern drama is the use of iambic pentameter, a metric verse pattern consisting of five metres of stressed and unstressed syllables per line. It lent a lyric quality to theatre and poetry of the time, and though it was treated as rule, it still allowed writers to play within the constraints of the established form (Tarlinskaja 193-4). Shakespeare is considered a master of the form, but already it had changed when Shirley was writing for the Caroline courts. However, plays were most commonly still written and performed in verse. It was not until much later that significant passages of prose appeared and some early modern plays were even reworked into prose.
Early modern theatre in Ireland was not as prominent as in England. Before the Werburgh Street Theatre, there was little presence of theatre in Ireland and none of the elaborate Caroline era masques popular with the English court at the time (Morash 2-3). The Werburgh Street Theatre was the first theatre of its kind in Ireland, and it was an attempt to promote the art form in Ireland (Morash 4). Ultimately, it was a relative failure in its time, and theatre did not take hold in Ireland until long after the height of early modern theatre.
The masque is a form of entertainment performed for the court or within an aristocratic home. These performances were either presented within plays, or as stand alone shows, and were a part of many popular shows that we know today. Famous plays that involve masques include The Tempest, for example. Masques became popular between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within Europe, and were performed by either professional actors, or members of the court themselves. These performances often contained allegory or mythical themes, as well as dancing, music and costumes. The masque itself has been described as “visually spectacular,” its use of two different hierarchies of performers often “blurred the boundary line between reality and fiction” as critic Julie Sanders describes (Sanders 18). These performances often consisted of intricate sets and props. Not many playwrights in the Caroline period wrote plays with inset masques other than Shirley, for example The Constant Maid, in which the masque appears in scene IV, and The Triumph of Peace (Sanders 18). Masques during the Caroline period often touched on political issues of the time, such as class hierarchy and royal hegemony. Critic Suzanne Gossett describes Caroline era masques as serving “imaginary solutions” to real world conflicts (Gossett 593).The masque is often overlooked as a whimsical performance rather than a political statement.
The Constant Maid has made a lasting impact on English literature and drama. This early modern English drama by James Shirley has been revived and adapted numerous times over the past couple centuries, and it continues to be appreciated by scholars around the world. Shirley’s use of classic themes and its relevance to contemporary issues make this play a valuable piece of literature to be studied. The questions provided below can be a helpful tool for students to carefully analyse The Constant Maid.