Britain was then enjoying, or enduring, a vigorous, perhaps an overheated financial expansion: the success of the British East India Company and the foundation of colonies in North America fed a fad for ever-wilder projects – a craze that Brome would mock in another play from the same era, The Antipodes.
At the time, Davenant was promoting the project of an enormous new theatre near Fleet Street, a plan that would only have added to the competition faced by a struggling dramatist like Brome.
Brome's play was one element in the so-called "Second War of the Theatres,"[3] a literary conflict between professional playwrights, most notably Ben Jonson, and courtly amateurs and dilettantes like Suckling.
Brome was a longstanding admirer of Jonson and a member of the so-called Sons of Ben; he was also the most politically assertive and sceptical of the professionals of his generation.
Sir Andrew is beset by three "projectors," who assail him with absurd get-rich-quick schemes, like a monopoly on peruke wigs, nuisance taxes on new fashions and female children, and a floating theatre to be built on the River Thames.
Swain-wit is a "blunt country gentleman;" Cit-wit is "a citizen's son who supposes himself a wit," while Court-wit is a "complementer," a devoted player of the game of fashion.
Since it is a comedy, the play ends happily: the final scene delivers a masque and a dance, in which the projectors are revealed to be clothed in rags under their robes.