SOMETIME in the early winter months of 1609 two young men must have had a rather unhappy and worried conversation. Perhaps for mutual support both emotional and physical they had it in the bed they so famously shared – as it was no doubt cold, and the conversation was largely about failure. As the new year began Francis Beaumont (b. circa 1585) was about twenty-four; his good friend and collaborator John Fletcher (b.1579) was turning thirty. They had worked hard since coming to London and had already written, separately and together, at least four and possibly as many as six plays, all for children's companies: certainly The Woman Hater (1606), The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), Cupid's Revenge (1607–08), and The Faithful Shepherdess (1608–09), and perhaps also The Scornful Lady and The Coxcomb.

But prospects were very bleak. First of all, their two most brilliant and individualistic plays, The Knight of the Burning Pestle and The Faithful Shepherdess, had notoriously failed. Next, they were losing their institutional outlets. Paul's Boys, which had produced The Woman Hater, had closed in 1606; the variously titled Blackfriars' Boys, who had produced The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cupid's Revenge, and The Faithful Shepherdess, by March 1608 had finally overreached themselves in performing satire, leading the king to swear that ‘they should never play more, but should first begg their bred’.