The Shoemaker*s Holiday (New Mermaids)

The rise of Simon Eyre, shoemaker, to the office of Lord Mayor providedDekker with the material for one of the most festive of Londoncomedies. This is no urban satire in the Jonsonian vein, but acheerfully idealistic - yet by no means na?ve - celebration of civicsocial ethos and the culture of the Elizabethan 'middling sort'. Setlargely in and around Eyre's workshop, the play provides a happy endingfor the earl's son who disguises himself as a Dutch artisan to wooEyre's daughter; the journeyman who comes home crippled after the warsin France is reunited with his destitute wife; and Eyre himself - thehandicraftsman whose 'heart is without craft' - who invites King HenryV to join in the artisans' Shrove Tuesday revelry. This editionprovides maps of the Rose theatre, in which the play was first stagedin 1599, and of Elizabethan London, the immediate backdrop of theaction.