This age thinks better of a gilded fool
Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.

Dekker’s couplet laments a society that prizes outward display over inward worth. A “gilded fool” is someone made superficially impressive by money, fashion, or status, while a “threadbare saint” suggests a person of genuine virtue and learning whose poverty makes them socially invisible. The contrast implies a moral and cultural inversion: wisdom and integrity are undervalued when they lack the trappings of success. In the context of early modern London—where rising consumer culture, patronage, and theatrical spectacle made appearance a kind of currency—the lines read as a sharp social critique of how easily judgment is corrupted by wealth and show.