It was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 12 October 1632, and first published in 1641, in Volume II of the second folio collection of Jonson's works.
Placentia is the target of the amorous ambitions of a set of gulls and fools and hangers-on – Parson Palate, Doctor Rut, Bias, Practice the lawyer, and Sir Diaphanous Silkworm.
It is the machinations of Master Compass, who exposes Mistress Polish's plot and effectively wins the day in the final revelation and his supremacy of the situation.
The foppish Sir Diaphanous Silkworm falls into a quarrel with the gruff soldier Captain Ironside, which causes Placentia to go into premature labour, thus revealing her illegitimate pregnancy.
A complex tangle of misunderstandings is eventually unwound: fourteen years earlier, Polish switched her own infant daughter with the Lady's niece Placentia.