It was acted by the King's Men; the cast list added to the play in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 cites Joseph Taylor, Nicholas Tooley, John Lowin, William Ecclestone, John Underwood, Richard Sharpe, Robert Benfield, and Thomas Holcombe – the same cast list as for The Little French Lawyer and The Custom of the Country, two other Fletcherian plays of the same era.
[4] In subject matter and source material, Fletcher's play parallels the anonymous drama Swetnam the Woman-Hater, which was first printed in 1620.
Silvio exploits a family connection – the wife of the citadel's keeper is his aunt – to meet his beloved; but he is caught and brought before the angry Duchess.
Silvio wanders about the country in disguise; he consults "Diviners, dreamers, schoolmen, deep magicians" in search of an answer to the Duchess's riddle, but without much success.
In the countryside, he falls in with a set of farm people and morris dancers; he also meets an old woman who claims special insight, and who he considers a Sibyl.
Silvio arrives at court, and proves he is the man who secured the victory with the bejeweled cameo portrait of Belvidere that he took from the Duke of Siena.
(The scenes in the country provide an element of satire against the Puritans who were hostile to stage plays and to traditional celebrations of many types, including Morris dancing.
Lopez, a "sordid userer," is jealous of his wife Isabella, who is pursued by two would-be seducer/adulterers; one is the elderly Bartello, the commander of the city's fortress (who supplies a connection between main plot and subplot); the second and more serious seducer is a handsome young gallant who calls himself "Rugio."
(Soto is a stock thin-man or "lean fool" figure, common in the dramas of the King's Men; see the entry on John Shank for details.)
[7] "Women Pleased is an excellent example of Fletcher's composite art, whereby tragicomedy and a variety of the comedy of manners, trespassing on absolute farce, are not unhappily wedded together into an entertainment which could not but have been very effective in the hands of a skillful troupe.