Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday - hire him, good master, that I may learn some gibble-gabble; ‘twill make us work the faster

I think of Thomas Dekker as one of the great hacks of Shakespeare’s time, writing over a long career a large number of plays, mostly lost, the survivors mostly with better-known co-writers.  The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599) appears to have been an early hit for him, a good example of the hack outdoing himself.  Hacks have their own kind of genius.

Dekker is not a great poet but he has a great ear, or perhaps an inventiveness, for speech.  The Shoemaker's Holiday has kept its interest because of its lively, outlandish speech by London’s shoemakers.

HODGE: How say’st thou, Firk, were we not merry at Old Ford?

FIRK: How, merry? why, our buttocks went jiggy-joggy like a quagmire.  Well, Sir Roger Oatmeal, if I thought all meal of that nature, I would eat nothing but bagpuddings. (IV.2, 103-4)

Firk gets a lot of the highlights.  The shoemakers generally speak in a jumpy prose, the upper-class characters, up to the king himself, in a rather less interesting verse.  Although Ralph gets a nice little verse speech for his wife when he is drafted and sent to France:

RALPH:  Thos know’st our trade makes rings for women’s heels:

Here take this pair of shoes, cut out by Hodge,

Stitched by my fellow Firk, seamed by myself,

Made up and pinked with letters for thy name.  (I.1, 65)

That is one plot, Ralph reuniting with his wife, who is pursued by a so-called gentleman.  Another is the usual romance plot – disapproving father, disguised suitor – except this time the disguise is as a Dutch shoemaker:

FIRK: … he’s some uplandish workman: hire him, good master, that I may learn some gibble-gabble; ‘twill make us work the faster.  (II.3, 71)

And in the C-plot the master shoemaker becomes Mayor of London – based on a true story – resulting in the holiday and a big celebratory breakfast, attended by the king, to end the play.

EYRE: Come out, you powder-beef queans!  What, Nan!  what, Madge Mumble-crust!  Come out, you fat midriff-swag-belly-whores, and sweep me these kennels that the noisome stench offend not the noses of my neighbors.  (II.3, 69)

This is the guy who will be Mayor of London by the end of the play.

This fantasy of the Land of Cockaigne appears a few scenes before the breakfast:

FIRK:  There’s cheer for the heavens: venison-pasties walk up and down piping hot, like sergeants; beef and brewis comes marching in dry-fats [barrels], fritters and pancakes come trowling in in wheel-barrows; hens and oranges hopping in porters’-baskets, collops and eggs in scuttles, and tarts and custards come quavering in in malt-shovels.  (V.2, 124)

I have included Pieter van der Heyden print of Pieter Breugel’s “The Land of Cockaigne,” courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as an example of the kind of thing Dekker was looking at.

Not a great play but a lot of fun in its way and essential for readers looking for the London of the time.  Plenty more plays like that coming up.

Text and page numbers are from Eight Famous Elizabethan Plays (Modern Library).

Next up is John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1599 or 1600), a much trickier piece of business than I originally realized.