The plot of the play possesses an unusually complex backstory (perhaps a symptom of the playwright's relative inexperience), which is revealed through the course of the action.
At the start of the play, Meleander's nephew Menaphon has returned from travel abroad; he has undertaken his journey to escape his unhappy love for the haughty Thamasta, Palador's cousin.
Palador, now the ruler of Cyprus, is still mired in melancholy, a condition his prime minister Sophronos (Meleander's brother and successor), his physician Corax, and his tutor Aretus try in vain to alleviate.
Thamasta, who had fallen in love with Parthenophill, is shocked out of her self-assured arrogance by the revealed disguise, and in a new spirit of humility becomes the wife of Menaphon.
In portraying the depression of Prince Palador and Lord Meleander, Ford worked in a subgenre of psychiatric fiction that would only become prominent in the twentieth century.
"[4] Some of this is clearly satirical: the page Grilla "holds up for ridicule the whining tunes, sighs, and tears of Cuculus, a fool planning to win the love of his mistress through extravagant conceits.