This first edition contained commendatory verses, including one by John Ford; the play was dedicated to William Gowre, Esq., a personal friend of the author.
A second quarto was published in 1632; the title page of Q2 states that the play was "lately acted" by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre (also called the Phoenix) in Drury Lane.
The scholar and critic Alfred Harbage argued that Shirley's play alludes to the 1625 wedding of Sir Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley.
Their nuptials were the "celebrity wedding" of the day, and nobody in London society, Harbage maintained, could have seen or read the play "without thinking of the affair of Sir Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley.
Brought before a Justice Landby (the uncle of the Captain who befriended Gratiana), Marwood is revealed to be still alive, and Millicent turns out to be the missing Lucibel.
Captain Landby, spying on the duel, has all the participants arrested and brought before the Justice — who insists that Jane and "Rawbone" (Haver, still in disguise) marry immediately.