These printings of Daniel, Jonson, and Shakespeare whose folio was published posthumously and at the urging of Jonson who financially benefited from it were in some sense avant-garde, for while religious and classical works were often distributed in this format, the seemingly ephemeral media of vernacular poetry and especially drama did not seem to warrant such lavish packaging.
He was a proud Thames boatman ferrying thousands of passengers across the river from Westminster to Southwark, where theaters, bear-baiting pits, and brothels lay beyond the reach of the Puritan leadership in London.
A life-long boatman, he worked in a trade which employed at its height close to 20, men ferrying politicians and preachers, actors and writers, prostitutes and cut-purses, laborers and aristocrats over the fetid, stinking, putrid slog that was the early modern Thames. Readers were entertained by publicity stunts such as his trip to Edinburgh in pursuit of Jonson with Taylor relying entirely upon strangers for support , and compendiums of useful information such as London tavern reviews.
Taylor was most certainly of his age, and yet we may stand to gain something if we try not necessarily to make him of our time, but to perhaps listen a bit to what he said of his. Unless you are a scholar of sixteenth and seventeenth century literature you have probably never heard of John Taylor the Water Poet. Or for that matter Robert Greene, the bohemian university wit, or Richard Barnfield, the sodomitical sonneteer. These men, considered marginal writers, existed at the limits of their society.
If not transgressive then they at least subverted some expectations of literary decorum, but not necessarily the decorum of their era though sometimes they did that too.
