The Example is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by James Shirley, first published in 1637. The play has repeatedly been acclaimed both as one of Shirley's best comedies and one of the best works of its generation. And it provides one of the clearest demonstrations in Shirley's canon of the influence of the works of Ben Jonson on the younger dramatist's output.
The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 24 June 1634. Like the majority of Shirley's plays, The Example was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The 1637 quarto was printed by John Norton for the booksellers Andrew Crooke and William Cooke, the stationers who issued five plays by Shirley in that year alone. The quarto shows signs of having been printed from the author's working drafts or "foul papers," making it highly unusual among the early printed editions of Shirley's plays.
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