SOURCE: “Thomas Dekker: A Partial Reappraisal,” in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. VI, No. 2, Spring 1966, pp. 263-77.

In the following essay, Berlin contends that Dekker's works demonstrate that the playwright is “genuinely moral and often angry,” adding: “When he can draw clear moral lines, solidified by a love for the class which originally drew these lines, he presents aesthetically satisfying drama.”

Compared to other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, Thomas Dekker has received little critical attention in recent years. It seems that the last word has been said about this profilic dramatist. All the clichés describing him are known and generally accepted by students of the drama. He has become a stereotype—the gentle, tolerant, lovable “moral sloven” who had his hand in too many plays, who occasionally sang a sweet song, who could at times present lively characters. Having been fixed in a formulated phrase, having...