Hyde Park was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 20 April 1632, and acted at the Cockpit Theatre by Queen Henrietta's Men.
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 13 April 1637, and published later that year by the bookselling partners Andrew Crooke and William Cooke, who issued several of Shirley's works in this period.
Upon publication Shirley dedicated the play to Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, who was the Keeper of the Crown Land of Hyde Park, as well as a member of the Privy Council and a Knight of the Garter.
Shackerley Marmion's Holland's Leaguer (1631), Thomas Nabbes's Covent Garden (1633) and Tottenham Court (1634), and several of the plays of Richard Brome all participate in this theatrical fashion.
In the second-level plot, Trier engages in one of those all-too-foolish tests of love and faith that feature so often in plays of the English Renaissance: he has Julietta entertain Lord Bonville to try her loyalty...only to lose her instead.
And in the broad and farcical comic subplot, Mistress Bonavent made an agreement with her husband before he left for the sea: she would be free to marry again if he does not return in seven years.