Love Tricks

Love Tricks, or The School of Complement is a Caroline stage play by James Shirley, his earliest known work.

Performance

Love Tricks was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 10 February 1625; it was performed by the Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Cockpit Theatre (prior to the epidemic of bubonic plague that closed the London theatres for most of 1625).

Love Tricks was revived during the Restoration era; it was performed by the Duke's Company at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Samuel Pepys saw it on 5 August 1667.

Publication

The play was published in 1631 under its subtitle, The School of Complement, in a quarto printed by Elizabeth Allde for the bookseller Francis Constable. The volume was dedicated to William Tresham. Other editions followed in 1637 and 1667. (The third edition of 1667 coincided with the revival that year, a common practice in the period.)

Derivativeness

Critics have complained that drama in the Caroline era had become "conventionalized," with stronger debts to earlier plays than to actual life. Shirley's Love Tricks (its title is suggestive of John Day's 1604 play Law Tricks) bears a range of resemblances with earlier works. Jenkin the Welsh character resembles Fluellen in Shakespeare's Henry V, and other stage Welshmen; his two conversations with the echo recall earlier echo scenes in several previous plays. The quarrel among Jenkin, Bubulcus, and Gorgon over who will speak the Epilogue recalls the quarrel of the three pages over who will speak the Prologue in Jonson's Cynthia's Revels, while Gorgon the witty servant reaches back to ancient Latin comedy. Selina's disguise as a shepherd recalls Rosalind in As You Like It, among other examples. The play has been called "a patchwork of romance, humors, manners, farce, pastoral, and masque." The closing scenes are "Fletcherian pastoral," while the school of complement scenes are "Jonsonian humors." Shirley even names one of his characters Orlando Furioso.