Thomas Dekker

The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus (Dodo Press) Thomas Dekker

Thomas Dekker (1572-1632) was an Elizabethan dramatist 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. He claimed credit for having written 240 plays. Close to twenty of his plays were published during his lifetime; of these, more than half are comedies, with three significant tragedies, Lust's Dominion (presumably identical to The Spanish Moor's Tragedy written with Day, Marston, and William Haughton, 1600), The Witch of Edmonton (with Ford and Rowley, 1621), and The Virgin Martyr (with Massinger, 1620). In 1599, he wrote many plays and it was during this year that he produced his most famous work, The Shoemaker's Holiday; or, the Gentle Craft, categorised by modern critics as citizen comedy. After 1602, Dekker split his attention between pamphlets and plays; thus, his dramatic output decreased considerably. He and Thomas Middleton wrote The Honest Whore in 1604, and Dekker wrote a sequel himself the following year. In 1612 he was imprisoned for debt, continuing to write only as a pamphleteer. On his release in 1619, he resumed writing plays, mostly as collaborations.