His "pleasant Comedie of 'The Gentle Craft,'" first printed
three years before the death of Queen Elizabeth, is one of his brightest
and most coherent pieces of work, graceful and lively throughout, if
rather thin-spun and slight of structure: but the more serious and
romantic part of the action is more lightly handled than the broad light
comedy of the mad and merry Lord Mayor Simon Eyre, a figure in the main
original and humorous enough, but somewhat over-persistent in
ostentation and repetition of jocose catch-words after the fashion of
mine host of the Garter; a type which Shakespeare knew better than to
repeat, but of which his inferiors seem to have been enamoured beyond
all reason. In this fresh and pleasant little play there are few or no
signs of the author's higher poetic abilities: the style is pure and
sweet, simple and spontaneous, without any hint of a quality not
required by the subject: but in the other play of Dekker's which bears
the same date as this one his finest and rarest gifts of imagination and
emotion, feeling and fancy, color and melody, are as apparent as his
ingrained faults of levity and laziness. The famous passage in which
Webster couples together the names of "Mr.
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