The play is a noteworthy satire on the emerging ethos of Capitalism as reflected in real estate and urban development in the early modern city.
The precise dates of authorship and first performance of the play are not known with certainty; but it must have originated c. 1632, when the development of Covent Garden was a public controversy.
In both the Elizabethan and the Jacobean eras, regulations had been promulgated to control the urban sprawl that was then uniting London with nearby Westminster.
(The waiver cost Bedford £2000; Charles had dismissed Parliament and begun his eleven-year period of personal rule, and needed the money.)
Plays exploiting "place realism," connections with real London landmarks and institutions, were common in the early 1630s, with Shackerley Marmion's Holland's Leaguer (1631), James Shirley's Hyde Park (1632), and Nabbes's Tottenham Court (1634) being good examples.