It was first published in the 1653 Brome collection Five New Plays, issued by the booksellers Humphrey Moseley, Richard Marriot, and Thomas Dring.
Over the full course of his playwriting career, Brome distinguished himself as a writer of city comedies that are strongly rooted in contemporary London.
[1] The Novella, like Brome's later play The English Moor, exploits a version of the standard Elizabethan bed trick so common in English Renaissance drama,[2] but with a racial twist: in each play a man goes to a sexual assignation expecting to encounter a white woman, only to find that his partner or potential partner is apparently an African woman.
Two wealthy Venetian senators, Pantaloni and Guadagni, have arranged a socially advantageous marriage for their respective son and daughter, Fabritio and Flavia.
Pantaloni has planned a revenge on the Novella for this trick: he will lure her into a public encounter with the city's executioner, which will disgrace her socially and cause her to be scorned and isolated.
The Novella is shown manipulating and putting off the men who circle around her; at one point she comes close to being raped by an ardent Spanish gentleman, though she is saved by Borgio and a German named Swartzenburgh.
The Novella proves to be Victoria, come from Rome in search of Fabritio; she has adopted her courtesan disguise as a means of finding her love in the strange city.
After comic business of hiding in closets and similar doings, Francisco and Flavia manage to escape the house and head for refuge...with Victoria.
Borgio the bravo turns out to be Paulo, Victoria's brother and a priest; he has been watching over his sister and her honour during her risky courtesan disguise.
Father Paulo's moral authority succeeds in quelling everyone's resentment and outraged pride, and the two young couples are blissfully united in matrimony.