The Shoemaker's Holiday

Blurb

The Shoemakers' Holiday, or the Gentle Craft is an Elizabethan play written by Thomas Dekker. It was first performed in 1599 by the Admiral's Men. It falls into the subgenre of city comedy. It contains the poem, The Merry Month of May.
The play was first published in 1600 by the printer Valentine Simmes. The first edition prefaces the play with an "Epistle to the Professors of the Gentle Craft," and the Prologue spoken before Queen Elizabeth when the play was acted at Court..
Philip Henslowe's Diary records a payment of £3 to "Thomas Dickers" for the play; since this is at most half of Henslowe's usual fee for a play, one or more other payments, not recorded in the Diary, are likely. Dekker based his play on a prose tract titled The Gentle Craft, by Thomas Deloney, printed in 1598.