The Shoemaker's Holiday: 1599 or 2013?

Complaints about European immigrants stealing British jobs. A prominent class system. A backdrop of overseas war. Yesterday's paper? Or some of the issues discussed in Thomas Dekker's sixteenth century play The Shoemaker's Holiday?

The city comedy is a snapshot of London life for three class systems: shoemakers, lower gentry and upper gentry (effectively the working, middle and upper classes respectively).

To avoid going to France and inevitably dying in the mainland war one of the text's central figures, Lacy, disguises himself as a Dutch shoemaker.

The Dutch culture is stereotyped with a "typical" stock character name, Hans Meulter, a butchery of the Dutch language "Der was een bore van Gelderland, Frolick sie byen; He was als dronck he could niet stand" and probably offensively culturally-appropriated costume. He is treated as a clown by the other characters - only allowed to work alongside them as it is suggested that his language is a source of comedy for the other characters and undoubtedly the audience. In fact, Dutch shoemakers made up a considerable portion of shoemakers in London during the period in which the play was published. They were a real threat to the British shoemakers in the industry. The audience (particularly the British working class) would have relished in the mockery of Hans as Dekker constructs the Dutch as sub- to the dominant English.

The class system is what the play's romance plot centres around. Lacy and Rose cannot marry because Lacy is of too high birth according to Rose's father. Lacy's uncle agrees in an attempt to maintain the class boundaries and establish a - blah blah blah basically the boring storyline/plot with a marriage at the end conventional of comedy to distract from all the bigger themes going on in the text. A very clever double plot but still. Relevant because of today's Great British class calculator. Thanks BBC for reinforcing that.

The backdrop of the war in France is the fissure in the text - the bigger picture in comparison to the petty squabbles and carnivalesque disguises taking place in London. Rafe comes back from war maimed but we're encouraged to interpret his return as lucky to have come back at all. The fact he was torn from Jane so soon after their marriage is constructed as Jane behaving out of order (emotional woman stereotype) while Rafe fulfils his duty as a man - stereotyping traditional gender politics. Meanwhile Lacy's avoidance of going to war at all is skimmed over in an attempt to maintain the romance plot line.

Overall we're left unsettled with the war plot line and disturbed almost at how the petty dealings of shoemakers and "real-life" is played up meanwhile the big issues are skimmed over, ignored and underplayed.

The text is a catalogue of modern current affairs issues in the sixteenth century; it's both a credit to Dekker's craft that the text has stood the test of time but also a signal of disappointment that over four hundred years later as a nation we are still struggling with the same issues.