Gentle Craft: Genre and Ideology in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday

abstract:This essay examines Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599) and the ways that it dramatizes the ideological emergence of the early modern citizenry in London. Looking through the dual lens of modern genre theory and Marxist literary criticism, the essay argues that the early modern history play is a precursor to the city comedy form and that The Shoemaker's Holiday is a hybrid play drawing on aspects of both genres. The play exhibits not just this generic shift but also the economic and ideological tensions between the aristocracy and early bourgeoisie that this shift represents. Ultimately, the essay argues that greater scholarly flexibility in defining genres and understanding their evolution can yield further insight into the similarly flexible and sometimes undefined nature of social relations in early modern England.