Setting the Stage

Citizen Comedy: Genre

Life of Thomas Dekker

Times of Thomas Dekker

The Shoemaker's Holiday

Play Excerpt

Close Reading

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Public V. Private Application:

As a woman, Rose Oatley would have had very little say in her own marriage arrangements. Rose's lack of power as a woman further complicated the already unfavored union between the socially disparate families. Rose did not want to openly flout her father's authority, forcing her to pursue her inner desires privately.

 

The plot of The Shoemaker’s Holiday revolves around romance and marriage.  Without Lacy’s love for Rose and Rafe’s romance with Jane there would have been no motivation for the story.  An important social issue to discuss in the context of the Renaissance period and presented in Dekker’s drama is the role of women.  In the 16th century, in Elizabethan-era London, women were institutionally subservient to men.  While Rowland Lacy goes to great lengths to marry outside of his social class, this is strictly fantasy for a 16th century audience (Kinney).

In “The Shoemaker’s Holiday,” Rose Oatley is of a lower class than her lover Lacy.  Her father, the Lord Mayor of London Sir Roger Oatley, concedes to Lacy’s uncle, “Too mean is my poor girl for his high birth.”  It was typical in this era for men to arrange the marriages of upperclass men and women in their society in order to make social and economic gains as well as alliances between powerful families.  Rose is told that she should stay away from Lacy because of her lower economic status.  Women in this time period were taught by men that they were subservient and of lesser value. Women of the lower class were to be productive, "rolling up their sleeves for work, women sought to follow the model of the 'good wife,' the woman who was not hesitant... to 'put her hand to the wheel' (Wall 13)." Upper class women, instead of honing their domestic productivity, would be sent to finishing school with the intent of learning how to be a true lady (Wall).

This kind of life structure and expectations put all women at a disadvantage to men. If they were undesirable to men and did not marry, they would have little way of earning money and living a comfortable lifestyle (13).

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London Economics

Social Mobility
as a Social Issue

Public V. Private Application:

Social Mobility is the main reason Lacy and Rose cannot be publicly married. Rose is of a lower social strata and so her family does not feel comfortable allowing a marriage into a higher strata. Lacy must disguise his private desire by going against social norms and not going to war. In addition, he must take on a lower social class in the form of Hans the shoemaker in order to gain access to Rose in a public manner.

 

Perhaps the biggest social issue explored in The Shoemaker’s Holiday is the lack of social mobility in London. The problem with Lacy’s desire to wed Rose is that they are from different social strata. Michael Hattaway explains there was a “scorn” of the city by the gentry that articulated itself in dramas written by playwrights working for the elite. On the contrary, “the city employed rival dramatists like Dekker to write legend-enacting pageants for the civic rituals which were so important in establishing London’s sense of identity (Hattaway 8)."

The state of the fledgling city was in relative shambles. There was no attempt to stabilize society by creating a comfortable middle class. Property and wealth were dolled out according to family line and title. “Plays like The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599) that construct particular communities reveal during the course of their representation the fissures in their social fabric, even if they end with an assertion of a harmonious order (Hattaway 8).” Simon Eyre, for example, is supposed to represent some kind of social mobility. As a tradesman, he takes a hint from Lacy to invest in a shipment of goods. After doing so, he becomes a wealthy man and gains status as the Lord Mayor of London. The key here is that Eyre needed the aid of Lacy in order to move up in social rank, indicating a sort of glass ceiling Eyre would have been unable to surpass otherwise.

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Public V. Private Application:

While Rose and Lacy were not of different religions, their different social strata are tied up in the concept that people of superior celestial worth are higher up on the economic hierarchy. The fact that Lacy and Rose finally do, secretly, tie the knot in a church testifies to the fact that they would now finally be on the same level. At the end of the play, the King approves the union because he does not want to undo a marriage sanctified by God. Religious union makes the economic union publicly acceptable.

 

Morality was a sticky issue in Renaissance London. Protestantism, Catholicism, and Puritanism were in conflict alongside universal ideas of social morality (marrying into the correct class and giving respect to those who “deserved” it.) Sylvia Feldman writes, “the problem of man’s spiritual welfare is fused with the problem of his earthly well-being (5).” The idea that one’s comfort and title in society may be tied up with their celestial being was a common theme in England. The significance of The Shoemaker’s Holiday is that it brings some worth and spirituality to the tradesman class in addition to making ritual accessible. “Whether or not laypeople understood the significance of the Church of England’s inclusion in a western Christendom presided over by the pope, local religious activities offered them many opportunities to celebrate and honor their familial traditions, their regional singularity, and their God (Ferrell 6).”

While ritual is made accessible with Dekker’s advent of a tradesman’s holiday, it is also a symbol of defiance against the norm. Lacy and Rose are wedded in a church despite the social morality they reject by being wed outside of their class in the first place.

 

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