[1] Greg Walker suggested that it was written and performed between 1529 and 1530[2] but later modified this to 1533 on the basis of the argument made by Axton and Happe in the introduction to their edition of Heywood's plays.
The play is often dated on internal evidence, particularly the so-called ‘new moon’ speech which seems to allude to the changing of King Henry VIII's consort from Catherine of Aragon to Anne Boleyn and his quest for a male heir.
More recent research into the play conducted as part of the Oxford Brookes University/Historic Royal Palaces project, "Staging the Henrician Court", has suggested a date of Christmas 1532/3.
Female characters then enter the stage in the form of the Gentlewoman who essentially petitions for no weather so that when she leaves the house she is not exposed to the elements and her beauty is able to remain intact, and the Laundress who requires the heat of the sun to dry her clothes.
Having heard the contrary and differing needs of his earthly subjects, Jupiter reasons that no one member of society is more important than another, and that they all need at least some part of the weather they desire to pursue their pastimes and occupations.
In 1907, Joseph Quincy Adams, Jr., suggested that Heywood might have been influenced by Lucian’s Icaro-Menippus when representing Jupiter on earth, notably the passage: “...close to every one was placed a golden chair.
Jupiter sat down in the first he came to, and lifting up the lid, listened to the prayers, which, as you may suppose, were of various kinds...One sailor asked for a north-wind, another for a south; the husbandmen prayed for rain, and the fuller for sun-shine...One petition, indeed, puzzled him a little; two men asking favors of him, directly contrary to each other, at the same time, and promising the same sacrifice; he was at a loss which to oblige.”[3] The date of the play suggests a connection with the King’s Great Matter, and Jupiter has been seen as analogous to Henry VIII.