Thomas Dekker

Thomas Dekker lying in bed, from the title page of Dekker his Dreame, 1620. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Thomas Dekker
Born	c. 1572 London, England
Died	25 August 1632 London, England
Occupation	Playwright

Thomas Dekker (?1572 - 25 August 1632) was an English Elizabethan playwright and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.

Life

Overview

Thomas Dekker (?1572-1632). Courtesy Digital Bard LMC.

About Shakespeare
William Shakespeare Shakespeare's life Religion • Sexuality Bibliography Collaborations • Attribution Criticism Reputation • Influence World Bibliography Folger Shakespeare Library Books on Shakespeare
Poems
Shakespeare's Sonnets Shakespearean sonnet Petrach vs. Shakespeare "A Lover's Complaint" "Venus and Adonis" "The Rape of Lucrece" "The Phoenix and the Turtle"
Plays
Chronology • Early texts First Folio • Second Folio False Folio • Style
Comedies
The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Merry Wives of Windsor Measure for Measure The Comedy of Errors Much Ado About Nothing Love's Labour's Lost A Midsummer Night's Dream The Merchant of Venice As You Like It The Taming of the Shrew All's Well That Ends Well Twelfth Night
Histories
King John • Richard II Henry IV, Part 1 • Part 2 Henry V • Henry VI, Part 1 Henry VI, Part 2 • Part 3 Richard III • Henry VIII
Tragedies
Troilus and Cressida Coriolanus • Titus Andronicus Romeo and Juliet'' Timon of Athens Julius Caesar Macbeth • Hamlet King Lear • Othello Anthony and Cleopatra
Romances
Pericles, Prince of Tyre Cymbeline • The Winter's Tale The Tempest The Two Noble Kinsmen
Editors
Rowe • Pope • Theobald Johnson • Steevens • Malone Chalmers
Contemporaries
Elizabeth I • James I Richard Barnfield Beaumont and Fletcher Geo. Chapman • Henry Chettle Robert Davenport Tho. Dekker • Michael Drayton Thomas Freeman • John Ford Tho. Heywood • Hugh Holland Ben Jonson • Thomas Kyd John Lyly • Richard Linche Gervase Markham Christopher Marlowe John Marston • Tho. Middleton Anthony Munday • Tho. Nashe George Peele • William Percy Walter Raleigh • William Rowley Cyril Tourneur • John Webster Geo. Whetstone • Mary Wroth Elizabethan miscellanies
In performance
Shakespeare's Globe Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford Shakespeare Festival Theatre companies Film and TV adaptations BBC Television Shakespeare
Miscellaneous
Shakespeare Apocrypha Authorship question • History Jubilee • Bardolatry Shakespeare's Birthplace Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare garden

Few details of Dekker's life have come down to us, though he was a well-known writer in his day, and is believed to have written or contributed to over 20 dramas. He collaborated at various times with several of his fellow-dramatists, including Ben Jonson. Ultimately Jonson quarrelled with Marston and Dekker, satirising them in The Poetaster (1601), to which Dekker replied in Satiromastix (1602). Dekker's best play is Old Fortunatus (1606) - his prose writings include The Gull's Hornbook (1609), The Seven Deadly Sins of London, and The Belman of London (1608), satirical works which give interesting glimpses of the life of his time. His life appears to have been a somewhat chequered one, alternating between revelry and want. He is one of the most poetical of the older dramatists. Lamb said he "had poetry enough for anything."

Career

Dekker was born in London. His name occurs frequently in Henslowe's Diary during the last 3 years of the 16th century; he is mentioned there as receiving loans and payments for writing plays in conjunction with Ben Jonson, Drayton, Chettle, Haughton, Wilson, Day and others, and he would appear to have been then in the most active employment as a playwright.

The titles of the plays on which he was engaged from April 1599 to March 1599/1600 are Troilus and Cressida, Orestes Fures, Agamemnon, The Gentle Craft, The Stepmotherls Tragedy, Bear a Brain, Pagge of Plymouth, Robert the Second, The Whole History of Fortunatus, Patient Grissel, Truth's Supplication to Candlelight, The Spanish Moor's Tragedy, The Seven Wise Masters. At that date it is evident that Dekker's services were in great request for the stage.

He is 1st mentioned in the Diary on 8 January 1597-88, as having sold a book, i.e. the manuscript of a play; the payments in 1599 are generally made in advance, “in earnest” of work to be done. In the case of 3 of the above plays, Orestes Fures, Truth's Supplication and The Gentle Craft, Dekker is paid as the sole author. Only The Gentle Craft has been preserved; it was published anonymously in 1600 under the title of The Shoemaher's Holiday.

It would be unsafe to argue from the classical subjects of some of these plays that Dekker was then a young man from the university, who had come up like so many others to make a living by writing for the stage. Classical knowledge was then in the air; playwrights in want of a subject were content with translations, if they did not know the originals. However educated, Dekker was then a young man just out of his teens, if he spoke with any accuracy when he said that he was threescore in 1637. And it was not in scholarly themes that he was destined to find his true vein. The call for the publication of The Gentle Craft, which deals with the life of the city, showed him where his strength lay.

Collaborations

We see what use could be made of his materials by a stronger intellect in Westward Ho, which he wrote in conjunction with John Webster. The play, somehow, though the parts are more firmly knit together, and it has more unity of purpose, is not so interesting as Dekker's unaided work.

Thomas Middleton formed a more successful combination with Dekker than Webster; there is some evidence that in The Honest Whore; or, The converted courtesan, generally regarded as the best that bears Dekker's name, he had the assistance of Middleton, although the assistance was so immaterial as not to be worth acknowledging in the title-page. Still that Middleton, a man of little genius but of much practical talent and robust humour, was serviceable to Dekker in determining the form of the play may well be believed. The 2 wrote another play in concert, The Roaring Girl, for which Middleton probably contributed a good deal of the matter, as well as a more symmetrical form than Dekker seems to have been capable of devising.

In The Witch of Edmonton, except in a few scenes, it is difficult to trace the. hand of Dekker with any certainty; his collaborators were John Ford and William Rowley; to Ford probably belongs the intense brooding and murderous wrath of the old hag, which are too direct and hard in their energy for Dekker, while Rowley may be supposed to be responsible for the delineation of country life. The Virgin Martyr, one of the best constructed of his plays, was written in conjunction with Massinger, to whom the form is no doubt due.

Controversy with Jonson

When Gerard Langbaine wrote his Account of the English Dramatic Poets in 1691, he spoke of Dekker as being "more famous for the contention he had with Ben Jonson for the bays, than for any great reputation he had gained by his own writings.” This is an opinion that could not be professed now, when Dekker’s work is read.

In the contention with Jonson, one of the most celebrated quarrels of authors, the origin of which is matter of dispute, Dekker seems to have had very much the best of it. We can imagine that Jonson’s attack was stinging at the time, because it seems to be full of sarcastic personalities, but it is dull enough now when nobody knows what Dekker was like, nor what was the character of his mother. There is nothing in The Poetaster that has any point as applied to Dekker's powers as a dramatist, while, on the contrary, Satiromastix; or, The untrussing of the humorous poet is full of pungent ridicule of Jonson’s style, and of retorts and insults conceived in the happiest spirit of good-natured mockery. Dekker has been accused of poverty of invention in adopting the character of the Poetaster, but it is of the very pith of the jest that Dekker should have set on Jonson’s own foul-mouthed Captain Tucca to abuse Horace himself.

Writing

To give a general idea of the substance of Dekker's plays, there is no better way than to call him the Dickens of the Elizabethan period. The 2 men were as unlike as possible in their habits of work, Dekker having apparently all the thriftlessness and impecunious shamelessness of Micawber himself. Henslowe's Diary contains 2 notes of payments made in 1597/1598 and 1598/1599 to release Dekker from prison, and he is supposed to have spent the years between 1613 and 1616 in the King's Bench. Dekker's Bohemianism appears in the slightness and hurry of his work, a strong contrast to the thoroughness and rich completeness of every labour to which Dickens applied himself; perhaps also in the exquisite freshness and sweetness of his songs, and the natural charm of stray touches of expression and description in his plays. But he was like Dickens in the bent of his genius towards the representation of the life around him in London, as well as in the humorous kindliness of his way of looking at that life, his vein of sentiment, and his eye for odd characters, though the random pickings of Dekker, hopping here and there in search of a subject, give less complete results than the more systematic labours of Dickens.

Dekker's Simon Eyre, the good-hearted, mad shoemaker, and his Orlando Friscobaldo, are touched with a kindly humour in which Dickens would have delighted; his Infelices, Fiamettas, Tormiellas, even his Bellafront, have a certain likeness in type to the heroines of Dickens; and his roaring blades and their gulls are prototypes of Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick Verisopht. Only there is this great difference in the spirit of the 2 writers, that Dekker wrote without the smallest apparent wish to reform the life that he saw, desiring only to exhibit it; and that on the whole, apart from his dramatist's necessity of finding interesting matter, he cast his eye about rather with a liking for the discovery of good under unpromising appearances than with any determination to detect and expose vice. The observation must also be made that Dekker's personages have much more individual character, more of that mixture of good and evil which we find in real human beings. Hackwriter though Dekker was, and writing often under sore pressure, there is no dramatist whose personages have more of the breath of life in them; drawing with easy, unconstrained hand, he was a master of those touches by which an imaginary figure is brought home to us as a creature with human interests.

A very large part of the motive power in his plays consists in the temporary yielding to an evil passion. The kindly philosophy that the best of natures may be for a time perverted by passionate desires is the chief animating principle of his comedy. He delights in showing women listening to temptation, and apparently yielding, but still retaining sufficient control over themselves to be capable of drawing back when on the verge of the precipice. The wives of the citizens were his heroines, pursued by the unlawful addresses of the gay young courtiers; and on the whole Dekker, from inclination apparently as well as policy (though himself, if Ben Jonson's satire had any point, a bit of a dandy in his youth), took the part of morality and the city, and either struck the rakes with remorse or made the objects of their machinations clever enough to outwit them.

From Dekker's plays we get a very lively impression of all that was picturesque and theatrically interesting in the city life of the time, the interiors of the shops and the houses, the tastes of the citizens and their wives, the tavern and tobacco-shop manners of the youthful, aristocracy and their satellites. The social student cannot afford to overlook Dekker; there is no other dramatist of that age, except Thomas Middleton, from whom we can get such a vivid picture of contemporary manners in London. He drew direct from life; in so far as he idealized, he did so not in obedience to scholarly precepts or dogmatic theories, but in the immediate interests of good-natured farce and tender-hearted sentiment.

In all the serious parts of Dekker's plays there is a charming delicacy of touch, and his smallest scraps of song are bewitching; but his plays, as plays, owe much more to the interest of the characters and the incidents than to any excellence of construction.

Dekker's plays contain a few songs which show him to have been possessed of very great lyrical skill, but of this he seems to have made sadly little use. His poem of "Canaans Calamitie" - if indeed it be his, which is hard to believe - is exceedingly poor stuff, and the verse portion of his Dreame, though containing some good lines, is, as a whole, not much better.

Works.— The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus (1600); The Shomakers Holiday. Or The gentle Craft. With the humorous life of = Simon Eyre, shoomaker, and Lord Maior of London (1600); Satiromastix. Or The untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1602); The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill (1603), with Chettle and Haughton; The Honest Whore. With TheHumours of the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife (1604); North-Ward Hoe (1607), with John Webster; West-Ward Hoe (1607), with John Webster; The Whore of Babylon (1607); The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat., With the Coronation of Queen Mary, ” and the coming in of King Philip (1607), with John Webster; The Roaring Girle. Or Moll Cut-Purse (1611), with Thomas Middleton; The Virgin Martir (1622), with Massinger; If It Be Not Good, the Dioel is in it (1612); The Second Part of the Honest Whore. With the Humors of the Patient Man, the Impatient Wife; the Honest Whore, persuaded by strong Arguments to turne Curtizan againe; her brave refuting those Arguments. And lastly, the Comicall Passages of an Italian Bridewell; where the Scaene ends (1630); A Tragi-Comedy: Called, Match mee in London (1631); The Wonder of a Kingdome (1636); The Witch of Edmonton. A known true Story. Comlposed into a Tragi-Comedy (1658), with William Rowley and jo n Ford. The Sun's Darling (1656) was possibly written by Ford and Dekker, or may be perhaps more correctly regarded as a recast b Ford of a masque by Dekker, perhaps his lost pla of Phaéton. The pageants for the Lord Mayor's shows of 1612 anti, 1629 were written by Dekker, and both are preserved. His tracts are invaluable for the light which they throw on the London of his time, especially in their descriptions of the circumstances of the theatre. Their titles, many of which are necessarily abbreviated, are: Canaans Calamitie, Jerusalems Miserie, and Englands Mirror (1598), in verse; The Wonderfull Yeare 1603. Wherein is shewed the picture of London lying sicke of the Plague (1603); The Batchelars Banquet (1603); a brilliant adaptation of Les Quinze Joyes de mariage; the Seven Deadly Sinnes of London (1606); Newes from Hell, Brought, by the Divells Carrier (1606), reprinted in the next year with some intercstin additions as A Knights Conjuring; Jests to make you Merie (1607) , with George Wilkins; The Belman of London: Bringing to Light the most notorious villainies that are now practisedjin the Kingdome, (1608); followed by a second part and enlarged editions under other titles; The Dead Tearme (1608); The Ravens Almanacke, foretelling of 'a Plague, Famine and Civill Warre (1609), ridiculing the almanac makers; The Guls Horne-booke (1609), the most famous of all his tracts, providing a code of manners for the Elizabethan gallant, in the aisle of St Paul's, at the ordinar, at the pla fhouse, and other resorts; Worke for Armorours, or the Peace is Broken (160); Faure Birds of Noahs Ark (1609); A Strange Horse-Race (1613?; Dekker his Dreame (1620), in verseand prose, illustrated-withawoodcut of the dreamer; and A Rod for Run-awa es (1625). This long list does not exhaust Dekker's work, much of which is lost.

Critical introduction

by William Minto

Dekker had several qualities which made him a desirable coadjutor in play-writing. He was a master of the craft of the stage. A man of quick sympathies, unconquerable buoyancy of spirit, infinite readiness and resource, he had lived among the people who filled the theatres, and took a genuine delight in moving them by the exhibition of common joys and sorrows. His whole heart went with his audience, and, though he had not the loftiness of aim of his greatest contemporaries, none of them had a finer dramatic instinct.

He knew London as well as Dickens, and had something of the same affection for its oddities and its outcasts. The humour which lights up its miseries, the sunshine which plays over its tears, the simple virtues of the poor and unfortunate, patience, forgiveness, mirthfulness, were the favourite themes of this tender-hearted dramatist. His plays are full of life and movement, of pathos that is never maudlin and humour that is never harsh. Vice always gets the worst of it, hardness of heart above all never goes unpunished, but relenting leniency always comes in to keep retribution within gentle bounds. Virtue is always triumphant, but it is discovered in the most fantastic shapes and the least conventional habiliments. It needs some charity to tolerate such heroes and heroines as Simon Eyre, the mad shoemaker, Candido, the patient citizen, Orlando Friscobaldo, Bellafronta, and other types of strangely disguised goodness, but the dramatist’s own love for them, with all their absurd eccentricities, is infectious. He laughs at them heartily, and carries us with him in his humour, but he knows how to change the key and soften laughter into tenderness.

Dekker’s verse is naturally graceful and copious; keeping unforced pace with the abundance of matter supplied by his fertile invention. He was not a careful writer. He probably "never blotted a line," and one cannot read his plays without wishing that he had ‘blotted a thousand.’ His intellect had not the intense chemical energy of Shakespeare’s, through which no thought could pass unchanged; and he did not strain after originality as some of his great compeers did, Webster, Jonson, Ford, and Chapman. He poured out in an easy stream whatever came readiest, and his best passages do not run far without being marred by some poor commonplace, tumbled out as it entered the mint, without any new stamp impressed upon it.

It is in his songs, interspersed at too rare intervals through his plays, that Dekker appears at his best. He had the most exquisite gift of song. Few of his contemporaries had a harder life, but all the miscellaneous drudgery through which he had to toil for a precarious livelihood failed to destroy his elasticity and spirits, and his songs rise from the earth like bird-songs, clear, fresh, spontaneous. There is genuine lyrical rapture in the notes. Like most town-bred poets, he had a passion for the country, and his fancy is never more happy than when dwelling on rustic delights.

Recognition

Golden Slumbers (Remastered 2009)

His poem "Sweet Content" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

In popular culture

Dekker's poetry entered into modern popular culture (although almost unnoticeably) when Paul McCartney included the lyrics from his ballad "Golden Slumbers" in the eponymous 1969 Beatles song.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems. New York: Bibliobytes, [199-?]

Plays

• Patient Grissel (with Henry Chettle & William Houghton) (1598). London: 1603; London: Shakespeare Society, 1811.
• The Shoemaker's Holiday: A comedy. London: Valentine Simmes, 1600.
• Old Fortunatus. London: S.S. for William Aspley, 1600.
• Satiro-Mastix; or, The untrussing of the humurous poet. London: Edward Allde for Edward White, 1602.
• The Honest Whore. London: Valentine Simmes for John Hodgets, 1604.
• The Magnificent Entertainment: Giuen to King Iames, Queene Anne his wife, and Henry Frederick the Prince. London: E. Allde for Tho. Man the yonger, 1604.
• The Seven Deadly Sins of London. London: Butler, 1606.
• Westward Hoe (with John Webster). London: I. Hodgets, 1607.
• The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat (with John Webster). London: E.A. for Thomas Archer, 1607.
• Northward Hoe. London: G. Eld, 1607.
• The Whore of Babylon. London: Nathaniel Butler, 1607.
• The Roaring Girle; or, Moll Cut-Purse (with Thomas Middleton). London: Nicholas Okes for Thomas Archer, 1611.
• If It Be Not Good, the Divel Is in It: A new play. London: I.T. for Edward Marchant, 1612.
• The Virgin Martyr: A tragedie (with Philip Massinger). London: Bernard Alsop & Thomas Fawcet for Thomas Iones, 1631.
• The Witch of Edmonton: A known true story (with William Rowley & John Ford) (1621). London: J. Cottrell for Edward Blackmore, 1658.
• The Noble Spanish Soldier (1634)
• The Wonder of a Kingdom: A comedy (1636). London: Rodwell & Martin, 1816.
• The Dramatic Works (edited by Richard Herne Shepherd). (4 volumes), London: J. Pearson, 1873. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV
• The Dramatic Works (edited by Fredson Bowers). (4 volumes), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1953-1961.

Fiction

• Decker His Dreame. London: Nicholas Oakes, 1620.

Non-fiction

• The Wonderfull Yeare, 1603: Wherein is shewed the picture of London, lying sicke of the plague. London: Thomas Creede, 1603.
• The Bellman of London. 3rd printing, London: Nathaniell Butler, 1608.
• Lanthorne and Candle-Light; or, The Bell-mans second nights walke. London: John Busbie, 1608.
• The Gull's Hornbook (1609). London: De La More Press, 1804.
• *The Four Birds of Noah's Ark. London: H.B. for Nathaniel Butter, 1609.
• The Guls Hornbook, and The belman of London: In two parts. London: Dent, 1904.
• The Plague Pamphlets (edited by F.P. Wilson). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1925.

Collected editions

• The Non-Dramatic Works (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart, Henry Chettle, William Haughton, & George Wilkins). (5 volumes), London: privately published, 1884-1886.
• Thomas Dekker (unexpurgated edition) (edited by Ernest Rhys). London: Vizitelly, 1887; London: T.F. Unwin / New York: Scribner, 1894.
• The Wonderful Year / The Gull's Horn-book / Penny-wise, Pound-foolish / English Villainies Discovered by Lantern and Candlelight, and selected writings (edited by E.D. Pendry). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967; London: Edwin Arnold, 1967.

Cast Away Care - Thomas Dekker poem reading Jordan Harling Reads

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy The Poetry Archive.

Poems by Thomas Dekker

The Shoemaker's Holiday - Thomas DEKKER Audiobook

Golden slumbers - a lullaby

1. Golden Slumbers
2. O Sweet Content

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language playwrights

References

• Chapman, L.S., Thomas Dekker and the Traditions of the English Drama. Lang, 1985.
• Gasper, J., The Dragon and the Dove: The plays of Thomas Dekker. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
• Gregg, Kate, Thomas Dekker: A study in economic and social backgrounds. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1924.
• Hunt, Mary, Thomas Dekker: A study. New York: Columbia University Press, 1911.
• McLuskie, Kathleen, Dekker and Heywood: Professional dramatists. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
•  Moir, R.B. & Minto, William (1911). "Dekker, Thomas". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 939-940.  Wikisource, Web, Jan. 4, 2018.

External links

Poems

• "Sweet Content".
• Selected Poetry of Thomas Dekker (1570?-1632) (1 poem) at Representative Poetry Online.
• Dekker in The English Poets: An anthology: Content (from Patient Grissell), Lullaby (from Patient Grissell), The Praise of Fortune (from Old Fortunatis, Rustic Song: ‘Haymakers, rakers, reapers, and mowers’ (from The Sun’s Darling)
• Thomas Dekker at PoemHunter (19 poems)
• Thomas Dekker at Poetry Nook (28 poems)

Audio / video

• Thomas Dekker poems at YouTube

Books

• Works by Thomas Dekker at Project Gutenberg
  • The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622) at Project Gutenberg
• The Wonderful Year (1603) at Oregon University
• The Gull's Hornbook (1609, modern spelling) at Big Wind
• The Guls Horn-Booke (1609, orig. spelling) at Renascence Editions
• Thomas Dekker at Amazon.com

About

• Thomas Dekker in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Thomas Dekker at NNDB
• Thomas Dekker at Theatre Database
• Thomas Dekker in Theatre History
• Thomas Dekker (1572 ca.-1632) at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Thomas Dekker (?1570-1632) at Luminarium
• Critical Introduction by William Minto
• "Thomas Dekker" in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Dekker, Thomas