SOURCE: “Dekker's Use of Serious Elements in Comedy: The Shoemaker’s Holiday,” in Serious and Tragic Elements in the Comedy of Thomas Dekker, Institut für Englishe Sprach und Literatur, 1975, pp. 12-36.

In the following essay, Shirley explores Dekker's mixture of gravity and levity in his depiction of situations and characters in The Shoemaker's Holiday.

Fredson Bowers notes in connection with The Shoemakers' Holiday, “On 15 July 1599 Henslowe had advanced £3 towards buying the book from Dekker, but the first recorded performance is that at court on 1 January 1600”;¹ the first quarto, not listed in the Stationers' Register, is dated 1600. The quarto copy, Professor Bowers points out, did not carry the dramatist's name on the title-page; the Dekker critic feels, however, that the information from Henslowe's diary and internal evidence from the play itself form a sufficient basis for attributing the play solely to Dekker, and he draws from his own...