Shirley Valentine Shirley Valentine Shirley Valentine is a one-character play by Willy Russell. Taking the form of a monologue by a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife, it focuses on her life before and after a transforming holiday abroad. Wondering what has happened to her youth and feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley finds herself regularly alone and talking to the wall while preparing an evening meal of egg and chips for her emotionally distant husband. When her best friend offers to pay for a trip-for-two to Greece, she packs her bags, leaves a note on the cupboard door in the kitchen,
The Brothers (Shirley play) offers his patrimony to his older brother—who refuses it. The supposedly dead Don Ramyres suddenly re-appears, to announce that he's merely been testing his sons; and he blesses the marriages of both young men. As is usually the case with Caroline era plays, "The Brothers" shows links and commonalities with various earlier works; Forsythe cites Webster's "The Devil's Law Case," Jonson's "The Staple of News", the Beaumont/Fletcher play "The Maid's Tragedy," and "The London Prodigal", among others. The Brothers (Shirley play) The Brothers is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by James Shirley. First published in 1653, "The