Four of the plays in this volume are based on important source materials, so that the relationship of plays to sources looms large in Cyrus Hoy's introductory essays. There is an extensive
account of the relation of The Shoemakers' Holiday to Deloney's Gentle Craft. The Introduction to Old Fortunatus relates in detail that play's relationship to the German Volksbuch, and to the
German Comoedia von Fortunate und seinem Seckel und W�翹nschh�翹tlein (1620), a redaction of Dekker's play. The Introduction to Patient Grissil relates Dekker, Chettle and Haughton's play to the
tradition of the Griselda story generally. The chronicle-history sources (Foxe, Grafton, Stow, Holinshed) of Sir Thomas Wyatt are surveyed in the Introduction, in his Introduction also,
Professor Hoy considers the play's relationship to the lost play, Lady Jane, by Dekker, Chettle, Heywood, Webster and W. Smith. Satiromastix has no known source, but as Dekker's contribution to
the stage quarrel of Marston and Jonson, this is a play that has always had particular interest for the student of Elizabethan theatrical history, and Professor Hoy therefore bestows on it the
most elaborate Commentary in all these four volumes.
