The Shoemaker's Holiday Book

I dont really know that you or anyone else needs me to rate a 17th century play about shoemakers so take that four stars as mostly meaningless BUT this play = pretty funny, pretty weird, in a direct conversation with shakespeare's henry v

basically what happens here is there are some shoemakers, and then one of them is secretly an irresolute rich man who is in love with a middle-class lady, and he sends ralph (one of the shoemakers) to the wars in his stead so he can stay and woo (he must go about disguised as a dutchman named hans in order to do this). meanwhile his mean uncle hires a random pepe lepew ish nobleman to court the middle-class lady, and all kinds of goofiness happens, including lots of costume changes, then ralph comes back missing a leg or something, then there is a plot event involving identifying a special custom-made pair of shoes, then rascality, then the shoemakers basically have a hoedown and declare a new shoemaker-centric holiday and then it's over

emerging theory: i'm pretty sure the movie caddyshack is based on this play