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 distinction 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-fic tion 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 'he 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

THE PROLOGUE

LOVELL, a Courtier.

DODGER, a Servant to the EARL OF LINCOLN. A Dutch Skipper.

A Boy.

ROSE, Daughter of SIR ROGER. SYBIL, her Maid.

MARGERY, Wife of SIMON EYRE.

JANE, Wife of RALPH.

Courtiers Attendants,

Officers, Soldiers,

Hunters, Shoemakers, Apprentices, Serv

ants.

Scene.-London and Old Ford.

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

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. Linc. 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,

'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,

Scant 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

Linc. To approve your loves to me? No,

subtilty.

Nephew, that twenty pound he doth be

stow

For joy to rid you from his daughter Rose.

But, cousins both, now here are none but friends,

I would not have you cast an amorous

eye

Upon so mean a project as the love
Of a gay, wanton, painted citizen.
I know, this churl even in the height of

scorn

5 cousin.

6 at once.

7 advance-pay.

8 equipment.

And yet not thee, if with a wayward spirit

Thou start from the true bias of my love.

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. Linc. 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

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-
grace.

Lacy. 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

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