"[1] The ballad's opening lines are, "LAte in the Morning as I abroad was walking,/All in a meadow green, I heard two Lovers talking;."
The play begins with voyeuristic means: the, seemingly omniscient, narrator stumbles upon two witty lovers on a hilly knoll close to a river.
She is reluctant to comply with this wish to be married, and replies that love, "is like a fishers angle,/ which oft hath golden baites, silly maidens to intangle.
The form of each speaker's part includes five lines—two rhyming couplets concluded with an exact repetition of line 4.
Though Shirley's play, the broadside ballad, and Haywood's novella do not retell exactly the same plot line, themes of witty lover engagement, sexual awakening, and lascivious practices are apparent in all three.