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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DAH-DEM |
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DEKKER (or DECKER), THOMAS (c. 1570-1641) , English dramatist, was born in London. His name occurs frequently in Henslowe's Diary during the last three years of the 16th century; he is mentioned there as receiving loans and payments for writing plays in conjunction with Ben Jonson, Drayton, Chettle, Haughton, Wilson, Day and others, and he would appear to have been then in the most active employment as a playwright. The titles of the plays on which he was engaged from April 1599 to March 1599/1600 are Troilus and Cressida, Orestes Fures, Agamemnon, The Gentle Craft, The Stepmother's Tragedy, Bear a Brain, Pagge of Plymouth, Robert the Second, The Whole History of Fortunatus, Patient Grissel, Truth's Supplication to Candlelight, The Spanish Moor's Tragedy, The Seven Wise Masters. At that date it is evident that Dekker
earnest " of work to be done. In the case of three of the above plays, Orestes Fures, Truth's Supplication and The Gentle Craft, Dekker
him where his strength lay. To give a general idea of the substance of Dekker's plays, there is no better way than to call him the Dickens of the Elizabethan period. The two men were as unlike as possible in their habits of work, Dekker having apparently all the thriftlessness and impecunious shamelessness of Micawber himself. Henslowe's Diary contains two notes of payments made in 1597/1598 and 1598/1599 to release Dekker from prison, and he is supposed to have spent the years between 1613 and 1616 in the King's Bench. Dekker's Bohemianism appears in the slightness and hurry of his work, a strong contrast to the thoroughness and rich completeness of every labour to which Dickens applied himself; perhaps also in the exquisite freshness and sweetness of his songs, and the natural charm of stray touches of expression and description in his plays. But he was like Dickens in the bent of his genius towards the representation of the life around him in London, as well as in the humorous kindliness of his way of looking at that life, his vein of sentiment, and his eye for odd characters, though the random pickings of Dekker, hopping here and there in search of a subject, give less complete results than the more systematic labours of Dickens. Dekker's Simon Eyre, the good-hearted, mad shoe-maker, and his Orlando Friscobaldo, are touched with a kindly humour in which Dickens would have delighted; his Infelices, Fiamettas, Tormiellas, even his Bellafront, have a certain likeness in type to the heroines of Dickens; and his roaring blades and their gulls are prototypes of Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick Verisopht. Only there is this great difference in the spirit of the two writers, that Dekker wrote without the smallest apparent wish to reform the life that he saw, desiring only to exhibit it; and that on the whole, apart from his dramatist's necessity of finding interesting matter, he cast his eye about rather with a liking for the discovery of good under unpromisingappearances than with any determination to detect and expose vice. The observation must also be made that Dekker's person-ages have much more individual character, more of that mixture of good and evil which we find in real human beings. Hack-writer though Dekker was, and writing often under sore pressure, there is no dramatist whose personages have more of the breath of life in them; drawing with easy, unconstrained hand, he was a master of those touches by which an imaginary figure is brought home to us as a creature with human interests. A very large part of the motive power in his plays consists in the temporary yielding to an evil passion. The kindly philosophy that the best of natures may be for a time perverted by passionate desires is the chief
In all the serious parts of Dekker's plays there is a charming delicacy of touch , and his smallest scraps of song are bewitching; but his plays, as plays, owe much more to the interest
Webster
Webster
Martyr
When Gerard Langbaine wrote his Account of the English Dramatic Poets in 1691, he spoke of Dekker as being "more famous for the contention he had with Ben Jonson for the bays, than for any great reputation he had gained by his own writings." This is an opinion that could not be professed now, when Dekker's work is read. In the contention with Ben Jonson, one of the most celebrated quarrels of authors, the origin of which is matter of dispute, Dekker seems to have had very much the best of it. We can imagine that Jonson's attack was stinging at the time, because it seems to be full of sarcastic personalities, but it is dull enough now when nobody knows what Dekker was like, nor what was the character of his mother. There is nothing in the Poetaster that has any point as applied to Dekker's powers as a dramatist, while, on the contrary, Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet is full of pungent ridicule of Jonson's style, and of retorts and insults conceived in the happiest spirit of good-natured mockery. Dekker has been accused of poverty of invention in adopting the character of the Poetaster, but it is of the very pith of the jest that Dekker should have set on Jonson's own foul-mouthed Captain Tucca to abuse Horacehimself. End of Article: DEKKER (or DECKER), THOMAS (c. 1570-1641) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/DAH_DEM/DEKKER_or_DECKER_THOMAS_c_1570.html"> DEKKER (or DECKER), THOMAS (c. 1570-1641) </a> |
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