Thomas Dekker (c. 1570-1637 or later) was a Londoner, possibly of Dutch descent. His name first appears early in 1598 in the diary of Philip Henslowe, proprietor of the Rose and Fortune theaters. Dekker was one of the most prolific of Henslowe's play-carpenters, for he is mentioned as sole author or collaborator in connection with forty-one plays in the five years 1598-1602. The diary also throws a sad light on Dekker's hand-tomouth existence, by its records of loans made by Henslowe, sometimes to rescue him from the debtors' prison; there is reason to believe that he was once confined for debt for three years together. From 1603 to 1613 he turned out a series of prose pamphlets, chiefly on London life, vividly informing and forceful in style. He drops out of sight early in the thirties.

The Shoemakers' Holiday is the merriest example of a sort of play very popular with London playgoers of Elizabethan days, the bourgeois comedy of London life,- citizens' comedy, it has been called, to distinguish it from the romantic comedy of Shakespeare, the satirical humor-comedy of Ben Jonson, and the tragicomedy of Beaumont and Fletcher. Such plays were written for the most part by dramatists not so fortunate as these men, who had established positions as writers for the high-class theaters such as the Globe and the Blackfriars, and for a better class of auditors than those which filled the more popular houses like the Rose and the Fortune. Dekker, Heywood, and, less representatively, Middleton, are the best known members of a large group of playwrights who thus catered to the theatrical wants of the common people, giving them in large measure pictures of the life which they lived.

The Shoemakers' Holiday was finished by July 15, 1599, when Henslowe enters a payment for it of three pounds so munificently were his fortunate authors rewarded! It was no doubt written in the six weeks immediately preceding, for on May 30, Dekker had received payment for Agamemnon; the world-wide difference in subject-matter between two consecutive plays is suggestive of the versatility of the popular playwright, as the short interim is of the forced draught under which he worked. The play was performed by the Admiral's Men at the Rose; its success we may infer from the fact that on New Year's Day of 1600 it was acted at court, a distinetion which had been granted on December 27,

1599, to another of Dekker's plays, the masque-like Old Fortunatus. Thus even the playwrights of the people had their occasional social triumphs. Dekker took his story from a collection of three prose tales on shoemakers, The Gentle Craft (1598), by Thomas Deloney, whose position in the narrative-fiction of the day as a purveyor of romantically rose-colored, pseudo-realistic tales for the consumption of middle-class readers somewhat corresponds to that of Dekker in the drama. From the second of these stories, that of the two royal shoemakers Crispine and Crispianus, Dekker obtained the background of war, the motive of the Lacy-Rose story, the shoefitting episode, Rose's flight to the Lord Mayor's, and the final royal sanction of their marriage. From Deloney's account of Simon Eyre, the madcap shoemaker of Tower Street, come practically all the figures and details of the Eyre story, as well as the suggestion for the Ralph-Jane story, although Dekker reverses Deloney's situation of the lost wife returning from France to prevent her husband from marrying again. There are in the play three threads of narrative - a romantic lovestory, a bourgeois love-story, and a picture of London life and manners supplying the background. The binding of the three Dekker accomplishes skilfully enough according to Elizabethan standards. The relations of Lacy and Ralph, first as soldiers enlisted for the French war, second as employees of Eyre, unite the first two. Hammon, appearing first as the suitor of Rose, later as the lover of Jane, furnishes another bond. It is Lacy, as Hans, who is responsible for Eyre's first commercial success, which leads to Eyre's election as sheriff. The Lord Mayor's entertainment of the new sheriff and his apprentices at Old Ford brings Lacy and Rose together again, and prepares for Rose's escape to Eyre's protection at the end of act four. The two love-threads are firmly knotted by Firk's tricks for the weddings, and the complications of the last act are thorough and yet natural. In other words, the play holds together well it is Dekker's most coherent piece of plotting. The weakest link in the chain, the point where credulity is subjected to the severest strain, is the opportune removal by death of so many aldermen as stood between Eyre and the Lord Mayoralty (IV. iv), but it would be captious to inquire too closely into the ways of Providence when it comes to the aid of a hard-pressed dramatist.

The romantic plot has been criticised as

not

thin. True, of incident it contains much. Right here, however, is shown Dekker's dramatic instinct. The really notable part of the play, what every reader remembers, is not the story of Lacy and Rose, pretty though it be, but the scenes of London life. Now by itself the story of Simon Eyre's rise to fame and fortune is not dramatic at all, consisting simply of a fortunate investment, a consequent election as sheriff, a rapid promotion to the Lord Mayoralty. The people

of this group are thoroughly well done.

Eyre, Margery, Firk, Hodge, have vitality enough to carry three or four plots, but by themselves they furnish only characterization. The wittiest comedy of manners grows tedious if its people do nothing but talk as may be learned from no less a person than Ben Jonson. Dekker accordingly gets all the fun he can out of the personalities and mannerisms of his trades-people, and uses the people of the love-stories for incident. As far as character-drawing goes, on the other hand, Lacy and Rose are not much more than sketched in comparison with the robust modeling of the comic group. They are sufficiently developed to make their actions seem natural and that is all that we require. Then, for the purpose of strengthening plot, of adding complication, Dekker introduces the bourgeois love-story, with its sentimental rather than romantic tinge. Is not this proportioned use of incident and character much the same sort of work that Shakespeare does in his best chronicle-histories, Henry IV, let us say? Taken by itself the story of the Percys' rebellion in 1 Henry IV, although it contains the essential contrast between Prince Hal and Hotspur, is neither rich in incident nor particularly interesting. Shakespeare therefore adds the comic group of Falstaff and his associates, with little story of their own, but firmly characterized, helping to characterize the prince, and supplying with their bustling comedy an illusion of action to fill the gaps in the main plot. The whole thing is a matter of proportion, and Dekker's play stands the test of analysis pretty well.

It is for its rollicking presentation of London life that we chiefly value The Shoemakers' Holiday. The picture it gives of the comfortable position of middle-class trades-people, the pride in honest labor and the possibilities of reward, the pleasant relations between master and men, the friendly intercourse between court and city, between blue blood and red making due allowances for the dramatist's privilege of selection-somehow impresses us as being essentially true. The hearty feeling of national well-being is that of the years after the Armada, for, though the action is ostensibly set in the time of Henry V, it is the life of his own day that Dekker reflects. For his intimate acquaintance with city customs and manners Dekker needed no information from Deloney.

He was a Londoner born and bred, a citizen of no mean city, and proud of his heritage. The author of books like The Gull's Hornbook, that inimitable series of directions to the country youth how to conduct himself in tavern, play house, the aisles of Paul's Cathedral, The Bellman of London and Lanthorn and Candlelight, with their exposures of rascality of every sort, and The Wonderful Year, with its memorable pictures of the plague of 1603, knew only too well the seamy side of city life. But in our play he writes only for the glory of the city and its craftsmen. He is in his happiest mood and the warm human sympathy evident in nearly all his work finds expression in the gusto with which he portrays the shoemaker and his group.

The genial humor of the play, its warm friendliness, distinguishes it from the realistic work of Jonson and Middleton. Eyre, in his mannerisms, reminds us somewhat of Jonson's humor comedy, but assuredly he is no humor type. His manner of speech represents merely the ebullient vitality of the man; it is not a temperamental crotchet, a genuine warp of character setting him apart from his fellows, like Morose's aversion to noise in The Silent Woman, or Kitely's jealousy in Every Man in His Humor. He is, therefore, not one-sided, as Jonson's people so frequently are, but is well-rounded and true to human nature. Nor has Dekker's work the satirical undertone of Jonson's. Jonson, like the classic authors, writes with the moral end of teaching virtue by making folly ridiculous. Sometimes, in deed, as in Volpone, the depiction of folly is so searching that it becomes downright castigation of vice, and the play almost loses the feeling of comedy. Dekker, except in his allegorical Old Fortunatus, is nothing of the reformer or conscious moralist. Jonson, on the whole, does not approve of his fellow-men; Dekker loves them, and smiles at their foibles with the large tolerance of the true humorist. So sure is Jonson of his moral rectitude, so confident of his superior taste, that his attitude toward his audience is usually contemptuous; Dekker sets out with no other purpose than to entertain, and is frankly pleased in giving pleasure. With Middleton, Dekker has more in common. Though Middleton deals with the same sort of material as does Jonson, he comes to his work with no moral preoccupation, but purely as the artist. He sets life before us as he sees it, without telling us what to think of it, and is for that reason the greater realist of the two. More of a realist, indeed, than Dekker, who is a good deal of a romanticist in his confidence in the fundamental goodness of human nature. Almost always there is in Dekker a touch of romance and of honest sentiment which the comedies of Middleton, brilliant but hard, lack. Less skilful than Middleton in plotconstruction, as a creator of character he is, in comedy at least, Middleton's superior.

As it was pronounced before the Queen's Majesty

As wretches in a storm, expecting day, With trembling hands and eyes cast up to heaven,

Make prayers the anchor of their conquer'd hopes,

So we, dear goddess, wonder of all eyes, Your meanest vassals, through mistrust and fear

To sink into the bottom of disgrace

By our imperfect pastimes, prostrate thus On bended knees, our sails of hope do strike,

Dreading the bitter storms of your dislike. Since then, unhappy men, our hap is such That to ourselves ourselves no help can bring,

But needs must perish, if your saint-like

ears,

Locking the temple where all mercy sits, Refuse the tribute of our begging tongues; Oh, grant, bright mirror of true chastity, From those life-breathing stars, your sun

like eyes,

One gracious smile; for your celestial breath

Must send us life, or sentence us to death.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. A street in London. Enter the Lord Mayor and the Earl of Lincoln.

Linc. My lord mayor, you have sundry

times

Feasted myself and many courtiers

more:

Seldom or never can we be so kind To make requital of your courtesy. But leaving this, I hear my cousin Lacy Is much affected to 1 your daughter Rose. L. Mayor. True, my good lord, and she loves him so well

That I mislike her boldness in the chase. Line. Why, my lord mayor, think you it then a shame,

To join a Lacy with an Oateley's name? L. Mayor. Too mean is my poor girl for his high birth;

Poor citizens must not with courtiers wed,

Who will in silks and gay apparel spend More in one year than I am worth, by far:

Therefore your honor need not doubt 2 my girl.

Line. Take heed, my lord, advise you what you do!

A verier unthrift lives not in the world, Than is my cousin; 3 for I'll tell you what:

'Tis now almost a year since he requested

To travel countries for experience.

I furnisht him with coin, bills of exchange,

Letters of credit, men to wait on him,
Solicited my friends in Italy

Well to respect him. But, to see the end,

Seant had he journey'd through half Germany,

But all his coin was spent, his men cast off,

His bills embezzl'd, and my jolly coz,5 Asham'd to show his bankrupt presence here,

Became a shoemaker in Wittenberg,
A goodly science for a gentleman
Of such descent! Now judge the rest by
this:

Suppose your daughter have a thousand pound,

He did consume me more in one half year:

And make him heir to all the wealth you have

One twelvemonth's rioting will waste it all.

Then seek, my lord, some honest citizen To wed your daughter to. L. Mayor. I thank your lordship. (Aside.) Well, fox, I understand your subtilty.

As for your nephew, let your lordship's

5 cousin.

6 at once.

7 advance-pay.

8 equipment.

Lacy.

My lord, I will for honor, not desire

Of land or livings, or to be your heir, So guide my actions in pursuit of France, As shall add glory to the Lacies' name. Line. Coz, for those words here's thirty portagues,10

And, nephew Askew, there's a few for you.

Fair Honor, in her loftiest eminence, Stays in France for you, till you fetch her thence.

Then, nephews, clap swift wings on your designs.

Begone, begone, make haste to the Guildhall:

There presently I'll meet you. Do not stay:

Where honor beckons 11 shame attends delay.

Exit. Askew. How gladly would your uncle have you gone!

Lacy. True, coz, but I'll o'erreach his policies.

I have some serious business for three days,

Which nothing but my presence can dispatch.

You, therefore, cousin, with the companies,

Shall haste to Dover; there I'll meet

Askew. Coz, all myself am yours: yet have this care,

To lodge in London with all secrecy;
Our uncle Lincoln hath, besides his own,
Many a jealous eye, that in your face
Stares only to watch means for your dis-

Lacy.

grace.

Stay, cousin, who be these?

Enter Simon Eyre, Margery, his wife, Hodge, Firk, Jane, and Ralph with a piece [of leather].

Eyre. Leave whining, leave whining! Away with this whimp'ring, this puling, these blubb'ring tears, and these wet eyes! I'll get thy husband discharg'd, I warrant thee, sweet Jane; go to! Hodge. Master, here be the captains. Eyre. Peace, Hodge; husht, ye knave, husht!

Firk. Here be the cavaliers and the colonels, master.

Eyre. Peace, Firk; peace, my fine Firk! Stand by with your pishery-pashery, away! I am a man of the best presence; I'll speak to them, an 12 they were Popes. -Gentlemen, captains, colonels, commanders! Brave men, brave leaders, may it please you to give me audience. I am Simon Eyre, the mad shoemaker of Tower Street; this wench with the mealy mouth that will never tire, is my wife, I can tell you; here's Hodge, my man and my foreman; here's Firk, my fine firking journeyman, and this is blubbered Jane. All we come to be suitors for this honest Ralph. Keep him at home, and as I am a true shoemaker and a gentleman of the gentle craft, buy spurs yourself, and I'll find ye boots these seven

13

years.

Marg. Seven years, husband? Eyre. Peace, midriff, peace! I know what I do. Peace!

you

Firk. Truly, master cormorant,14 shall do God good service to let Ralph and his wife stay together. She's a young new-married woman; if you take her husband away from her a-night, you undo her; she may beg in the daytime; for he's as good a workman at a prick and an awl as any is in our trade. Jane. O let him stay, else I shall be undone!

Firk. Aye, truly, she shall be laid at one side like a pair of old shoes else, and be occupied for no use.