[1] Fair Em was published in quarto twice before the closing of the theatres in 1642: Edward Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum (1675), states that Fair Em was written by Robert Greene; but since Greene ridicules the play's author and parodies two lines from the closing scene in his 1591 pamphlet Farewell to Folly, this attribution also seems unsound.
A later play, John Day's The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (1600), bears noteworthy resemblances to Fair Em.
[5] The plot derives from traditional sources; a ballad titled The Miller's Daughter of Manchester was entered into the Stationers' Register on 2 March 1581.
[6] In the main plot, William the Conqueror falls in love with the image on the shield that the Marquess of Lubeck carries in a tournament.
The ladies stage a plot, in which William absconds with the woman he thinks is Marianne; in doing so he gets in trouble with Zweno, who is under the same mistaken impression.
A few nineteenth-century commentators (notably F. G. Fleay) read hidden significance into the play, interpreting it as an allegory on the theatrical conditions of its day.