sentences:  The 1600 quarto was the only edition of the play prior to the nineteenth century.No external evidence indicates the date of the authorship or first performance of the play; but the text of the work is rich in allusions and references that bear upon the question of its date.The text refers to a progress through the English countryside by Queen Elizabeth I, and also to an outbreak of bubonic plague and a severe drought that lowered the level of the River Thames to an unusual extreme.