Thomas Dekker was born in London about 1570, but no details of his family relations or his education are known. The first record of his work is a payment to him in January, 1598, as a memebr of Henslowe's group of dramatists. For the next six years he was actively engaged in playwriting, chiefly under Henslowe, first for the Admiral's men and later for Wocester's, and he continued to write plays sporadically during the remainder of a comparatively long life. From early in the seventeenth century, however, he devoted most of his time to the composition of prose pamphlets, which are among the best records of London life in his day; such as The Bellman of London (1608) and The Gull's Handbook (1609). In spite of his prolific literary output, Dekker lived a life of hardship as a result of debt. He borrowed money of Henslowe in 1598 to secure his release from prison. He may have been the Thomas Dekker who was buried in 1632; he was certainly dead by 1640 or 1641.
In his connection with Henslowe, Dekker had a hand in over forty plays, only a few of which survive. The Shoemaker's Holiday and Old Fortunatus he wrote alone, but most of his work was done in collaboration with Henslowe's writers, chiefly with Drayton, Chettle and Wilson, but not infrequently with Jonson, Day, Haughton, Munday, Haeywood, Middleton and Webster. The group exploited many fields. Of the individual plays extant, Old Fortunatus, printed in 1600, is Dekker's best romance. Patient Grissel, written with Chettle and Haughton in 1598 in the spirit of the domestic play, inaugerated a vogue of the patient wife. In 1601 Dekker was drawn into the stage quarrel and aquitted himself well in Satiromastix, a reply to Jonson's Poetaster. The Honest Whore of 1604 is the first of a series of dramatic studies in which contact of London gallants with the rising merchant class is depicted. The more realistic Westward Ho and Northward Ho, written with Webster, followed soon after, and The Roaring Girl, in which he collaborated with Middleton, about 1610. Among the later plays, The Virgin Matyr, written with Massinger about 1620, and The Witch of Edmonton, with Ford and Rowley about 1621, are excellent tragedies. He also made significant contributions to the great civic pageants in London. |
