THOMAS

See also:

• THOMAS SHADWELL (c. 1642-1692)

SHADWELL (c. 1642-1692)  , English playwright and miscellaneous writer, was born about 1642, at Santon Hall, Norfolk, according to his son's account . He was educated at Bury St Edmund's School, and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he was entered in 1656 . He left the university without a degree, and joined the Middle Temple . In 1668 he produced a prose comedy, The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents, based on Les FtIckeux of Moliere, and written in avowed 'imitation of Ben Jonson . His best plays are Epsom Wells (1672), for which Sir Charles Sedley wrote a prologue, and the Squire of Alsatia (1688) . Alsatia was the cant name for Whitefriars, then a kind of sanctuary for persons liable to arrest, and the play represents, in dialogue full of the argot of the place, the adventures of a youngheir who falls into the hand of the sharpers there . For fourteen years from the production of his first comedy to his memorable encounter with Dryden, Shadwell produced a play nearly every year . These productions display a genuine hatred of shams, and a rough but honest moral purpose . They are disfigured by indecencies, but present a vivid picture of contemporary manners . Shadwell is chiefly remembered as the unfortunate Mac Flecknoe of Dryden's satire, the " last great prophet of tautology," and the literary son and heir of Richard Flecknoe: " The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense." Dryden had furnished Shadwell with a prologue to his True Widow (1679), and in spite of momentary differences, the two had been apparently on friendly terms . But when Dryden joined the court party, and produced Absalom and Achitophel and The Medal, Shadwell became the champion of the true-blue Protestants, and made a scurrilous attack on the poet in The Medal of John Bayes: a Satire against Folly and Knavery (1682) . Dryden immediately retorted in Mac Flecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S .

(1682), in which Shadwell's personalities were returned with

interest . A month later he contributed to Nahum Tate's continuation of Absalom and Achitophel satirical portraits of Elkanah Settle as Doeg and of Shadwell as 0g . In 1687 Shadwell attempted to answer these attacks in a version of the tenth satire of Juvenal . At the Whig triumph in 1688 he superseded his enemy as poet laureate and historiographer royal . He died at Chelsea on the 19th of November 1692 . His son, CHARLES SHADWELL, was the author of The Fair Quaker of Deal and other plays, collected and published in 1720 . A complete edition of Shadwell's works was published by his son Sir John Shadwell in 1720 . His other dramatic works are—The Royal Shepherdess (1669), an adaptation of John Fountain's Rewards of Virtue; The Humorist (1671); The Miser (1672), adapted from Moliere; Psyche (1695); The Libertine (1676); The Virtuoso (1676),; The history of Timon of Athens the Man-hater (1678),—on this Sakespearian adaptation see O . Beber, Shadwell's Bearbeitung des . . . Timon of Athens (Rostock, 1897) ; A True Widow (1679) ; The Woman Captain (168o), revived in 1744 as The Prodigal; The Lancashire Witches and Teague O'Divelly, the Irish Priest (1682) ; Bury Fair (1689) ; The Amorous Bigot, with the second part of Teague O'Divelly (169o) ; The Scowerers (1691) ; and The Volunteers, or Stockjobbers, published posthumously (1693) . SHAFI`Y [Mahommed ibn Idris ash-Shafi'il (767-820), the founder of the Shafi'ite school of canon law, was born in A.H .

150 (A.D . 767) of a Koreishite (Quraishite)

family at Gaza or Ascalon, and was brought up by his mother in poor circumstances at Mecca . There, and especially in intercourse with the desert tribe of Hudhail, he gained a knowledge of classical Arabic and old Arabian poetry for which he was afterwards famous . About 170 he went to Medina and studied canon law (figh) under Malik ibn Anas . After the death of Malik in 179 legend takes him to Yemen, where he is involved in an 'Alid conspiracy, carried prisoner to Bagdad, but pardoned by Harun al-Rashid . He was certainly pursuing his studies, and he seems to have come to Bagdad in some such way as this and then to have studied under IIanifite teachers . He had not yet formulated his own system . After a journey to Egypt, however, we find him in Bagdad again, as a teacher, between 195 and 198 . There he had great success and turned the tide against the I.Ianifite school . His method was to restore the sources of canon law which Abu IIanifa, had destroyed by inclining too much to speculative deduction . Instead, he laid equal emphasis upon the four—Koran_, tradition, analogy, and agreement . See further, under MAHOMMEDAN LAW .

In 198 he went to Egypt in the

train of a new governor, and this time was received as the leading orthodox authority in law of his time . There he developed and somewhat changed the details of his system, and died in 204 A.D . 820) . He was buried to the south-east of what is now Cairo, and a great dome (erected c . A.D . 1240) is conspicuous over his tomb . See F . Wiistenfeld, Schdfa'iten, 31 ff.; M . J. de Goeje in ZDMG. xlvii . 1o6 ff.; C . Brockelmann, Geschichte, i . 178 ff.; M'G. de Slane's transl. of Ibn Khallikan, ii .

569 if., Fihrist, 209,

Nawawi's Biogr . Dict . 56 if . (D . B .