Nineteenth-century scholars and critics generally classified four plays as solo Rowley works – the tragedy All's Lost by Lust and the comedies A Shoemaker a Gentleman, A Match at Midnight, and A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vexed.
The title page of the 1638 quarto states that the work was "sundry times acted at the Red Bull and other theaters, with general and good applause."
Rowley drew upon several sources for the plot of his play, notably William Caxton's The Golden Legend and Thomas Deloney's The Gentle Craft.
)[4] Rowley depended on the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed for his account of the early Christian martyr St. Alban ("Albon" in the play).
The saints' plays that characterized that era had largely passed out of fashion by Rowley's generation, though they could still exert some influence – Dekker and Massinger's The Virgin Martyr (1622) being the obvious example.
Allured is killed in the fighting, and his Queen (otherwise unnamed) insists that her sons, Elred (or Eldred) and Offa, flee the field to avoid death or capture.
While Crispin is out with Leodice, a press gang from the Roman army comes to the Shoemaker's shop looking for new soldiers; Elred/Crispianus, motivated by his innate princely valor, is willingly drafted.
Leodice is by now expecting her first child with husband Crispin; amid a good deal of rushing about with the Nurse and hostile comments from the Shoemaker's wife, the princess gives birth.
Winifred is a young noblewoman pursued by suitors, most prominently a Welsh nobleman called Sir Hugh; but Winifed desires to follow her religious vocation in preference to marriage.
Discouraged by the Britons' military defeat and his own rejection, Hugh abandons his high station to pursue a humble life; he too becomes an apprentice in the Shoemaker's shop.
Eventually Winifred is apprehended by the Romans and martyred; Sir Hugh loyally remains by her side and joins her in martyrdom, dying apparently from grief.