‘Thou being thus attired, I’ll entreat my cousin John [the] barber -because he is a very handsome young man, neat and fine in his apparel as indeed all barbers are - that he would take the pains to wait upon you to the merchant, as if he were your man; which he will do at the first, because one of you cannot understand the other, so that it will be sufficient with outward courtesy one to greet another, and he to deliver to you his note and you to give him your bill, and so to come home.

‘It doth my heart good to see how trimly this apparel doth become you; in good faith, my husband, me seems [i.e. it seems to me] in my mind I see you in it already, and how like an Alderman you will look when you are in this costly array! At your return home from the merchant, you shall put off all these clothes at my cousin’s again, and come home as you did go forth. Then tell John the Frenchman that the Alderman was with the merchant this afternoon. You may send him to him in the morning, and bid him to command that his ship may be brought down the river; while she is coming about, you may give notice to the linen drapers of the commodities you have coming’. ‘Enough, wife’, quoth he, ‘thou hast said enough; and by the grace of God, I’ll follow thy counsel, and I doubt not but to have good fortune’.

PROFESSORS members of the profession or guild
THE GENTLE CRAFT a standard name for the shoemaking trade (Tilley, C801); also
the title of Dekker’s source, the story-book by Thomas Deloney.

2 conceited ingeniously conceived
Shoemaker’s Holiday ed. (Shoomakers Holyday Q1, Shoomakers Holiday Q3) The title of the play, in both Q1 and Q3, has no apostrophe. It is therefore uncertain whether Dekker intended the titular ‘holiday’ to be that of all shoemakers or just of a single shoemaker – either Simon Eyre, who creates the holiday as a gift to the city, or Saint Hugh, the foundational figure for whom the holiday is named at 18.204-5. Bowers, Hoy and Palmer adopt the plural form; Steane, Smallwood and Wells, and Parr the singular. I have retained the singular form, which has now become standard. But this choice somewhat arbitrarily forces a solution to an issue that remains indeterminate in the original quarto texts. See Introduction, p. xix.

3 my Lord Admiral’s Players one of London’s leading theater companies, based at the Rose Theater, and principal rival to Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s men; famous for productions of Tamburlaine and The Spanish Tragedy.

6 argument outline of the plot

15-16 three-man’s songs songs for three male voices, such as catches or madrigals.

16 Take all in good worth Be content with

1 THE KING OF ENGLAND Henry VI was king when the historical Simon Eyre served as alderman and Lord Mayor; but Dekker’s King seems closer to Henry V, given the play’s backdrop of wars in France and (by implication) the battle of Agincourt. Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth was performed in the same year as Dekker’s play, and arguably provides an important point of theatrical reference for it. See Introduction, p. xi.