Brome began writing for that company in 1637, once the London theatres had re-opened after a long closure during the bubonic plague epidemic of 1636–37.
[8] The play's intricate and complex multiple plot begins with two London neighbours, Meanwell and Rashly, who have been missing for the past year.
Meanwell's children reverse the normal and expected social roles of gender: Arthur is mild-tempered and returns Lucy's affection, but his sister Dionisia is a "virago" who longs for her own revenge upon the Rashlys.
Nathaniel and his friends Vincent and Edmund are delighted to learn that Quicksands has married the beautiful young Millicent; they optimistically expect opportunities to cuckold the old moneylender.
In the fight, Nathaniel is slightly wounded; Vincent and Edmund draw in his defence, so that Theophilus faces three-to-one odds.
The discomfort is accentuated when the courtiers, masked and costumed as horned animals, break in with an impromptu wedding masque that strongly suggests inevitable cuckoldry.
Theophilus dislikes Phyllis's talkativeness and informality, and angrily dismisses the new maid; but he has no trouble patching up his quarrel with Nathaniel.
Quicksands has no luck at managing his new wife: after he foolishly accuses her of complicity with the masquers of the previous day, the offended Millicent gains his vow to respect her virginity for the next month.
Dionisia discovers her brother Arthur's love of Lucy, from papers in his room; she acts out her virago urges by dressing as a man, complete with sword and pistol, to exact her revenge upon the Rashlys.
She wins admittance to the Rashly house by claiming to be Millicent's brother; but once there, she falls in love with Theophilus and cannot work the violence she planned.
Six years earlier, the two men had bankrupted Winloss in a lawsuit, forcing him abroad; now they have made up for their former action by reprieving him from debtors' prison in Dunkirk.
In the play's resolution, Quicksands is now determined to divorce Millicent and terminate his unconsummated "mock marriage," and justice Testy agrees.
Critics both traditional and modern have expressed appreciation for the play's effective plotting, but reservations about its matter – especially its sexual material (the bed trick switch of Phyllis for Millicent) and the device of blackface make-up.
Nineteenth-century critics found these offensive on the grounds of vulgarity; modern commentators have focused on the same matters, but from more egalitarian perspectives.