This collaborative masterpiece of hilarious city comedy was performed
by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars playhouse in 1605. The
story is of an allegorical simplicity that lends itself to satire of
civic mores and traditions as well as to parody of the sentimental,
idealising London comedy presented at the amphitheatres in the suburbs:
Goldsmith Touchstone, an upright London citizen, has one modest and one
ambitious daughter, one righteous and one disreputable apprentice;
virtue is rewarded, ruthlessness comes to grief - and receives a
drenching in the muddy Thames. The introduction to this edition
discusses various methods of establishing authorship and highlights the
irony of the collaborators' comic vision of contemporary London life.

Michael Neill is Professor of English, Department of English,
University of Auckland, New Zealand, and editor of the Oxford
Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra