Where Lacy Defies a King

The Shoemaker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My first play by Thomas Dekker. I found it interesting and sometimes amusing with a story I kinda enjoy, but it could have been better. So--about 3 stars.

Perhaps the best characteristic of the play is how the characters have distinctive voices and mannerisms. I think the intention is to play that for laughs, though it's a bit flat on the page; I expect Dekker knew who would play certain parts and knew they could make the delivery comedic. Our MC pretends to be Dutch, so he's speaking Dutch throughout, in a way I take to be amusing to an audience in this time. Eyre, the rich shoemaker boss, is full of playful bluster and pretend anger, forever calling his wife and workers goofy names. "Peace, you cracked groats, you mustard tokens," he says to the men, later referring to them as drabs and scoundrels and a lot of other things. "Work, you bombast-cotton-candle-quean," he says to the wife of one of his men. Then, to his wife and his servant, he says, "Come out, you powder-beef queans! ...What, Madge Mumblecrust!" But he's actually considerate and helpful to all of them, and is forever stopping his men in their work to give them drink and to be merry. (If this had been a musical, you'd see them dancing and singing in the shoe shop. Wait, the jolly shoemakers actually do have two songs... It feels like medieval Newsies.) His wife is always complaining or listing injustices (in what I took for an aggrieved voice) before adding "but let that pass," in a passive-aggressive way. Half her lines end with that, and it has a comedic sound that I bet worked with an audience.

I'm supposing. I dunno. It seems kinda funny to read, but the line delivery would probably make it or break it.

The plot and subplot are entertaining to a degree. One character, Rowland Lacy, is to be sent to France leading some troops for the king, but he wants to stay to try to woo Rose, the daughter of the Lord Mayor. She's not exactly lowborn, but he's the nephew of the earl who doesn't want him to end up with her. Lacy bails on the plan, putting on a disguise, speaking Dutch, calling himself Hans, and getting a job as a shoemaker, which he learned while living for a time in Holland. All this is so he can try to get close to Rose. The subplot is about Ralph and Jane, a pair of newlyweds who get separated when he's in France fighting. He returns lame but can't find her; she's been told he was dead and isn't looking for him. Another man is pressuring her to marry, and she agrees in the end, very reluctantly.

The problem with most of the plot is that nobody puts in too much effort to make things work out. They just do. Things happen; it turns out okay. Happy endings. Ralph and Jane find each other in time; Lacy is forgiven for not going to France, and he and Rose marry, with the king's blessing.

I love a happy ending. I could have used a little more of the characters working through their conflicts, achieving something by their efforts. That's where the play lost me.

Anyway, I was amused. I almost gave it a 4, but I'll hold out for a better play by him. We'll see.

People who like Elizabethan comedies might enjoy this.

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