Love in a Maze

The Changes, or Love in a Maze is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy of manners written by James Shirley, first published in 1639.

Love in a Maze was also performed at the Inns of Court in 1664, and John Dryden adapted material from the play for his The Maiden Queen (1668).

Shirley's popular play influenced subsequent works by other writers of his era, including The Lovesick Court by Richard Brome and The Ladies' Privilege by Henry Glapthorne.

(Mrs. Goldsworth, their mother, wants Aurelia to marry Sir Gervase Simple, a rich but clownish newly minted knight.)

Sir Gervase Simple falls in love with and marries a Lady Bird, who turns out to be a boy page in disguise, put up for the prank by Caperwit the poetaster.