Thomas Dekker
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Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – August 25, 1632) was an Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.
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- A wise man poor
Is like a sacred book that ’s never read,—
To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead.
This age thinks better of a gilded fool
Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.- Old Fortunatus (1599).
- And though mine arm should conquer twenty worlds,
There ’s a lean fellow beats all conquerors.- Old Fortunatus (1599).
- To add to golden numbers golden numbers.
- Patient Grissell (1599), Act i. Sc. 1.
- Honest labour bears a lovely face.
- Patient Grissell (1599), Act i. Sc. 1.
- The best of men
That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.- The Honest Whore (1604), Part i, Act i. Sc. 12. Compare: "Of the offspring of the gentilman Jafeth come Habraham, Moyses, Aron, and the profettys; also the Kyng of the right lyne of Mary, of whom that gentilman Jhesus was borne", Juliana Berners, Heraldic Blazonry.
- I was ne’er so thrummed since I was a gentleman.
- The Honest Whore (1604), Part i, Act iv. Sc. 2. Compare: "Zounds! I was never so bethump’d with words, Since I first call’d my brother’s father dad", William Shakespeare, King John, Act ii. Sc. 2.
- This principle is old, but true as fate,—
Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.- The Honest Whore (1604), Part i, Act iv. Sc. 4. Compare: "Cæsar said he loved the treason, but hated the traitor", Plutarch, Life of Romulus.
- We are ne’er like angels till our passion dies.
- The Honest Whore (1604), Part ii, Act i. Sc. 2.
- Turn over a new leaf.
- The Honest Whore (1604), Part ii, Act ii. Sc. 1. Compare: "Turn over a new leaf", Thomas Middleton, Anything for a Quiet Life (1621), Act iii. Sc. 3.
- Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
O sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex'd?
O punishment!- Poem Sweet Content
