Thomas Dekker’s play The Shoemaker’s Holiday is based around the buying and selling of goods. His play is a working class success story showing that true human value is measured in honest work instead of high class and social connections. During the time the play was written England was going through financial expansion and capitalism was on the rise. Throughout the play, the labor of shoemaking becomes a disguise in helping Lacy and Eyre to succeed.
Simon Eyre began the play as a middle-class shoemaker. After luck and with the help of Lacy, he ends up the Lord Mayor of London. However, it wasn’t the actual shoemaking which caused him financial gain but from pretending to be wealthy and sneakily buying a very profitable ship of goods. Lacy had helped him to do this buy getting the ship’s skipper drunk and giving him a down payment. He was then able to make his social climb.
In the same way Lacy set Eyre up in gaining his fortune, Eyre also gave Lacy the opportunity to work for him. Lacy, disguised as a Dutch shoemaker, was able to reconnect with Rose and ended up fitting her for shoes. At that point they then planned out their marriage. Ralph was also another main male character caught in a romance plot. However, shoemaking did not take the same disguise as it did for Lacy; instead the aftermath of war did. Ralph went off to war and came back physically unrecognizable. Unable to find his wife, he went back to the craft of shoemaking. While working, a servingman comes acquiring a shoe to be made for Hammon and his bride. He also gave a shoe to fit for size and Ralph realizes it is his wife who is to be married. Realizing his wife is alive, he is able to find her and take her home where she belongs.
All three of these men were able to obtain what they wanted through honest labor but very different approaches. Eyre shows human value by being an honest shoemaker most of his career. Although his gain of the ship was sneaky, it was given freely. By him helping Lacy and hiring him, it brought him success. Lacy’s new job of being a shoemaker and working helped him to get the girl. Ralph was honest throughout the play and went off to war even when he was just married. Even after war he continued to labor making shoes and was connected with his wife again. Shoemaking in this play was used to symbolize honest work of the middle class and the triumphs gained from it.
I’m not sure that it’s fair to say that Eyre was being sneaky; it’s true that he’s taking advantage of someone else’s bad luck, like people who buy foreclosed homes today for much less than their real value, but he doesn’t cheat anyone. Your emphasis on shoemaking as a sign of honest work is important. And note how often shoes are part of the action, making them dramatic props of considerable significance.