Thomas Dekker

Thomas Dekker was an English playwright and pamphleteer active in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He is best known for his work in the busy theatrical world of London, where he wrote for popular companies and often collaborated with other dramatists.

His writing ranges from comedies and pageants to vivid prose pamphlets about everyday urban life. Readers and historians often remember him for the warmth and immediacy of his style, as well as for works such as The Shoemaker's Holiday.

Details of his life are incomplete, which is common for writers of his period, but he is generally understood to have died in or around 1632. Even so, his work remains an important window into the people, pressures, and pleasures of early modern London.