Background
Thomas Dekker was probably born about 1572 in London. Few facts of Dekker’s life are certain. He may have been born into a family of Dutch immigrants living in London and is first mentioned as a playwright in 1598.
Thomas Dekker was probably born about 1572 in London. Few facts of Dekker’s life are certain. He may have been born into a family of Dutch immigrants living in London and is first mentioned as a playwright in 1598.
Most of his work was done in collaboration and is now lost, but to his early years belong three of his best-known dramas: Old Fortunatus (1600), a lyrical folk-play; The Shoemaker's Holiday (1600), his most successful comedy, and Satiromastix (1602), a rollicking satire on Ben Jonson, acted during the War of the Theatres.
A psychological tragedy, The Honest Whore, Part I, followed in 1604 and, in the next years, a group of satirical London comedies written with Thomas Middleton and John Webster. In about 1606 or 1607 Dekker forsook the theater to continue a series of prose pamphlets that had been inaugurated with The Batchelor's Banquet (1603).
The most famous are his account of the life of London gallants, The Gull's Hornbook (1609), with its portrayal of a theater audience, and The Wonderful Year (1603), one of a group of realistic descriptions of the plague in London. The Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606), News from Hell (1606), and Lanthorn and Candlelight (1608) expose the sins of the populace. By 1610 he had produced at least 13 of these, The Gull's Hornbook (1609) being the best-known. The Honest Whore (Part 1, 1604; Part 2, ca. 1605) and The Roaring Girl (ca. 1610, written with Thomas Middleton) are among the six or seven plays from this period of Dekker's career.
From 1613 to 1619, Thomas Dekker evidently wrote nothing; these years may have been spent in prison, but the evidence on this point is notconclusive. His later work includes the domestic tragedy The Witch of Edmonton (written in 1621), remarkable for its enlightened protest against the persecution of supposed witches.
Several attempts at the fashionable tragi-comedy form followed, as well as some mayoralty pageants. His dramatic works (done in collaboration with such playwrights as Philip Massinger, William Rowley, and John Ford) reveal his abiding interest in London life, with his earlier sunny realism occasionally qualified by a note of bitterness. Dekker composed the annual lord mayor's pageant in 1628 and 1629.
Dekker is particularly known for his lively depictions of London life.
He was a versatile and prolific writer, whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists. Of the nine surviving plays that are entirely Dekker’s work, probably the best-known are The Shoemakers Holiday (1600) and The Honest Whore, Part 2 (1630). These plays are typical of his work in their use of the moralistic tone of traditional drama, in the rush of their prose, in their boisterousness, and in their mixture of realistic detail with a romanticized plot. Dekker’s ear for colloquial speech served him well in his vivid portrayals of daily life in London, and his work appealed strongly to a citizen audience eager for plays on middle-class, patriotic, and Protestant themes.
