Publisher's Synopsis
The rise of Simon Eyre, shoemaker, to the office of Lord Mayor provided
Dekker with the material for one of the most festive of London
comedies. This is no urban satire in the Jonsonian vein, but a
cheerfully idealistic - yet by no means naïve - celebration of civic
social ethos and the culture of the Elizabethan 'middling sort'. Set
largely in and around Eyre's workshop, the play provides a happy ending
for the earl's son who disguises himself as a Dutch artisan to woo
Eyre's daughter; the journeyman who comes home crippled after the wars
in France is reunited with his destitute wife; and Eyre himself - the
handicraftsman whose 'heart is without craft' - who invites King Henry
V to join in the artisans' Shrove Tuesday revelry. This edition
provides maps of the Rose theatre, in which the play was first staged
in 1599, and of Elizabethan London, the immediate backdrop of the
action.
