The last suggested to Van Brugh his character of Lady Townly, in _The Provoked Husband_.

Lamb says Shirley "was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common.

A new language and quite a new turn of tragic and comic interest came in at the Restoration." Thomas Dekker, died about 1638: wrote, besides numerous tracts, twenty-eight plays.

The principal are _Old Fortunatus_, _The Honest Whore_, and _Satiro-Mastix, or, The Humorous Poet Untrussed_.

In the last, he satirized Ben Jonson, with whom he had quarrelled, and who had ridiculed him in _The Poetaster_.