Scholars have analyzed Heywood's construction of gender dynamics in the play. Scholar Jennifer Higginbotham notes that throughout the course of the play, the term "lady" comes to supplant "maid" in defining Bess, which Higginbotham identifies as part of the play's broader concern with her chastity. As an unmarried, financially well-off women in her own right, Bess thematically alludes to Elizabethan anxieties surrounding Elizabeth I as a female head of state. The multiple relationships she holds with the male characters of the play and the multiple instances in which Bess cross-dresses allows her to repeatedly confront existing gender and power dynamics and enable several situations throughout the play when she is empowered to define her own social standing rather than allowing for the male characters around her to define her societal role or power.
