[1] Northward Ho was entered into the Stationers' Register on 6 August 1607, and was published later that year in quarto by the printer George Eld.
The title page of the first edition identifies the two authors, as well as the playing company that staged the work, the Children of Paul's – the same troupe that performed Westward Ho.
The play's opening scene, set in the town of Ware north of London, introduces two "gallants," Featherstone and Greenshield, and portrays their situation.
The men have long been trying to seduce a citizen's wife, Mistress Mayberry, without success (a type of situation often depicted in the city comedy of the period).
They encounter Mayberry and his friend Bellamont, seemingly by chance, and tell the two men a story of how they (Featherstone and Greenshield) have both seduced the wife of a London tradesman; they keep her name secret at first, but then let it slip as if by accident.
His friends Leverpool and Chartley and the prostitute Doll witness the arrest and are tempted to intervene, but Philip stops them; he sends a tavern servant to his father for bail.
She is courted by, and exploits, various potential suitors, including a Dutch visitor named Hans van Belch, a local grocer called Allum, and a Welsh soldier, Captain Jenkins.
Featherstone, in pursuing his own sexual and financial goals, has set himself and the Greenshields on a trip to Ware; Bellamont and the Mayberrys travel along as part of their revenge plan.
At Ware, the play's schemes bear their final fruit: a disguised Greenshield is tricked into offering his masked wife to Mayberry's amorous attentions...only to have their true identities exposed to each other.
Featherstone is appalled to learn that he has married a prostitute; but Doll asserts that she's reformed and promises to be a good and faithful wife.
In Westward Ho, the trio of citizens' wives, Mistresses Tenterhook, Honeysuckle, and Wafer, are largely indistinguishable and interchangeable.