time of Charles I), for example, 'The Broken Heart'; but they are abnormal
and unhealthy. Philip Massinger, a pupil and collaborator of Fletcher, was
of thoughtful spirit, and apparently a sincere moralist at heart, in spite
of much concession in his plays to the contrary demands of the time. His
famous comedy, 'A New Way to Pay Old Debts,' a satire on greed and cruelty,
is one of the few plays of the period, aside from Shakspere's, which are
still occasionally acted. The last dramatist of the whole great line was
James Shirley, who survived the Commonwealth and the Restoration and died
of exposure at the Fire of London in 1666. In his romantic comedies and
comedies of manners Shirley vividly reflects the thoughtless life of the
Court of Charles I and of the well-to-do contemporary London citizens and
shows how surprisingly far that life had progressed toward the reckless
frivolity and abandonment which after the interval of Puritan rule were to
run riot in the Restoration period.

The great Elizabethan dramatic impulse had thus become deeply degenerate,
and nothing could be more fitting than that it should be brought to a
definite end. When the war broke out in 1642 one of the first acts of
Parliament, now at last free to work its will on the enemies of Puritanism,
was to decree that 'whereas public sports do not well agree with public
calamities, nor public stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation,' all
dramatic performances should cease. This law, fatal, of course, to the
writing as well as the acting of plays, was enforced with only slightly
relaxing rigor until very shortly before the Restoration of Charles II in
1660. Doubtless to the Puritans it seemed that their long fight against the
theater had ended in permanent triumph; but this was only one of many
respects in which the Puritans were to learn that human nature cannot be
forced into permanent conformity with any rigidly over-severe standard, on
however high ideals it may be based.