Performing Cross-Class Clandestine Marriage in The Shoemaker's Holiday

This essay adapts Judith Butler's theories on the performance of gender to investigate the performative nature of marriage in Thomas Dekker's city comedy, The Shoemaker's Holiday. The cross-class clandestine wedding of the main plot allows Rose to work against her father's demands, against class endogamy, and toward a choice that provides her with economic and emotional benefits. This wedding, read in the context of the play's multiple weddings and remarriages, suggests a critique of the class, paternal, and gender hierarchies such ceremonies are often assumed to support.