[1] The play first appeared in a badly-printed 1656 quarto issued by the bookseller Edward Archer (his shop was "at the sign of the Adam and Eve"), with the three dramatists' names on the title page.
Critics have placed the original version's date of authorship in the 1614–18 period, based on the limited evidence available; Massinger's revision was done perhaps c. 1626, for a new production by the King's Men.
The play is set in "Epire", or Epirus, an independent polity in what appears to be Ancient Greece; the characters have Greek names and refer to Lycurgus, Draco, Solon, Plato, and Aristotle.
Cleanthes is appalled that his father Leonides is facing death—so much so that he and his wife Hippolita devise a plan to fake the old man's demise and hide him away in the countryside.
Much of the play is devoted to broad and cynical humour of this type: ruthless people looking forward to the advantages they will gain when a father, mother, husband, or wife is executed.
An old man named Lysander tries to reclaim his lost youth by dying his white hair and taking lessons from a dancing master.
This leads to the play's culmination in the trial scene that fills all of Act V. It is eventually revealed that the Duke's harsh law is a sort of public test of virtue.