At the beginning of The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Rose is in love with Lacy. There are barriers to their marriage, however, as her own father believes that they should not be wed due to Lacy’s “high birth” (1.11). For Rose, who has grown up as the daughter of the Lord Mayor, there is an evident difference between social class and wealth. She was raised in comfortable settings but her large country home begins to feel like a prison due to her father’s insistence that they respect class boundaries. In this way, Rose’s forlorn state speaks to the tension between material wealth and class status: No matter how rich or powerful her father becomes, the nature of his birth means that he does not believe that he can ever belong to the true elite of England. Rose feels imprisoned “as a thief” (2.11), not by the actual building, but by the circumstances of her birth.

To overcome this barrier of social class, Rose feels compelled to take drastic action. She ignores Sybil’s warnings and arranges to elope with Lacy, having seen through his disguise. Her father was unable to entertain the idea that a nobleman might adopt the persona of a working-class shoemaker, but Rose immediately knew “Hans’s” true identity. Rose risks everything she has to run away with Lacy. She risks the disapproval of her family, as well as her own status in society. She knows that Lacy is risking his own inheritance, so the comfortable lifestyle she knew in her youth may be denied to her should she marry Lacy. Nevertheless, Rose does not hesitate: She takes control of her fate by running away with Lacy. 

Fortunately for Rose, the intervention of the King helps to resolve the class differences between herself and her new husband in such a way that her father cannot object to the marriage. She is elevated and Lacy is knighted, showing not only the power of the King, but the importance of asserting her agency over her fate. She is rewarded for refusing to be cowed by social class.

Roland Lacy embodies the inherent tension of class identity in The Shoemaker’s Holiday. The play opens with Lacy’s own uncle, the Earl of Lincoln, condemning Lacy’s wayward behavior. While he is upset that Lacy spent all his money and dismissed his servants while abroad, it is the idea that Lacy took on the working-class job of shoemaker that offends Lincoln the most, as he sarcastically disparages this work as “a goodly science for a gentleman / Of such descent” (1.30-31). 

Lacy wants to marry Rose, a woman from a different social class, and this feels like another betrayal to Lincoln. Lacy benefits from his status in society, yet he rejects the expectations society places on him because of this status. He reinforces this rejection by adopting the identity of Hans, a working-class Dutch shoemaker, rather than go to fight in France. Lacy is not only determined to marry Rose, but to erode the limitations imposed on him by people like his uncle and the society he inhabits. Lacy is willing to risk his inheritance through his refusal to acknowledge the rigidity of social class. 

The King recognizes the sincerity of Lacy’s love through his willingness to abandon his privilege. Impressed by this sincerity, the King knights Lacy. The knighthood not only absolves Lacy of failing in his duty to his country, but it also erases the class tensions that held back his marriage. His show of sincerity impresses the man who most embodies the very structures and expectations of class society that Lacy sought to challenge. Lacy marries Rose and is forgiven for his transgressions, but he does not resolve the inherent tensions that held him back.

Ralph is one of the young journeymen employed in Simon Eyre’s workshop. He is a model of working-class identity, having learned his trade and married his young wife, Jane, in a manner that conforms to social expectations. His conformity is challenged when he is called upon to serve in the army, fighting for his native England against the French. Ralph does not want to go to war. Eyre and the other workers set out to defend him, only for Lacy to tell Ralph that he must do his duty and settle “his country’s quarrel” (1.180) with France. Ralph faces his uncertain future with a grudging, determined acceptance, giving his wife a pair of shoes (examples of his trade) so that she might always think of him. Lacy runs away from his duty, undermining everything he told Ralph about responsibility and patriotism. In this sense, Ralph serves as a model for working-class duty and humility in contrast to the flippant entitlement of the nobility.

Ralph returns from the war with a number of wounds. He is greatly changed, both physically and mentally. As well as his limp and scars, he discovers that his wife has vanished. In this way, Ralph represents the true cost of the war against France. While nobles speak about soldiers and losses in abstract numbers, Ralph’s physical wounds show the true cost of the battle and his broken heart shows the price that he has paid in the name of his country. 

Eventually, Ralph is able to reunite with Jane and affirm her love for him, yet this love is challenged by Master Hammon as another reminder of the plight of the working class. Ralph does everything society expects of him and he pays a terrible price; while he may be reunited with his wife, he is forever changed by his experiences of war to a greater extent than any other character in the play. In his own quiet way, Ralph thus embodies the way in which working-class people bear the burden of society to a far greater extent than all others.

The Lord Mayor of London, Oatley, serves as a guardian of the status quo. As a wealthy man who has benefited from the stratified social order, he seeks to preserve the separation of the social classes by preventing his daughter from marrying Lacy. Oatley begins the play by condemning the possible match between Lacy and Rose, disparaging his “poor girl for [Lacy’s] high birth” (1.11). To Oatley, the emotion or the romance of the marriage is irrelevant because the pairing is a challenge to the separation of the social classes, claiming that “poor citizens must not with courtiers wed” (1.12). This is Oatley’s operating philosophy for the remainder of the play; he spends the remaining scenes striving to hide away his daughter or find her another, more suitable match.

Oatley fails in his attempts to keep the boundaries of social class distinct. An attempt to pair Rose with Master Hammon fails because neither party has any real affection for the other. Oatley is so invested in the idea of marriage as a statement on the preservation of social class that he ignores the human element. In the closing scenes, even as Oatley complains to the King that the marriage is an offense to the status quo, the King ignores his pleas. He knights Lacy and thus raises Rose up alongside her husband, elevating her into a higher social class by decree. The King then asks Oatley whether this pleases him; Oatley can do nothing other than confirm that he is “content” (21.115) with what the King has done. The character most invested in preserving the social order is thus undone by the figure most emblematic of the social order itself.