[3] The closest that William Shakespeare's plays come to the genre is the slightly earlier The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597), which is his only play set entirely in England; it avoids the caustic satire of city comedy, however, in preference for a more bourgeois mode (with its dual romantic plots governed by socio-economics not love or sex), while its setting, Windsor, is a town rather than a city.
[5] It portrayed a broad range of characters from different ranks (often focused on citizens), employing "deeds and language such as men do use", as Jonson put it, and was usually set in London.
[6] During the Tudor period the Reformation had produced a gradual shift to Protestantism and much of London passed from church to private ownership.
[7] City comedies depict London as a hotbed of vice and folly; in particular, Jonson's Epicoene, Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and Marston's The Dutch Courtesan.
Verna Foster has argued that John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (c. 1629–1633) re-works many of the features of city comedy within a tragic drama.