The play was never printed in the seventeenth century, and survived only in a defective manuscript – making it arguably the most problematical work in the Massinger canon.
Scholars who have studied the authorship question have generally dismissed the Rowley attribution; the play as it exists is widely assigned to Massinger alone.
The manuscript that did survive, written double-sided on nineteen folio leaves, eventually came into the possession of Edmond Malone, the prominent Shakespeare scholar of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Bellisant is at the center of a circle of high-living noblemen and ladies at the royal court; King Charles, witnessing their disputes and discontented relations, decrees that a Parliament of Love will be held, at which the unhappy lovers will be able to plead their cases.
The egotistical Clarindore, who has put aside his wife to pursue the courtier's life of indulgence, is determined to have Bellisant's virginity, even placing bets with his cronies on his success.
The play ends with a repentant Cleremond and Leonora, and with the chastened egotists Bellisant and Clarindore re-united with their respective loves, Montrose and Beaupre.