Middleton has often been assumed to be fundamentally anti-Puritan on the evidence of his city comedies. But the ridicule of Puritans so common in the Jacobean drama may perhaps exaggerate how unpopular they were with the audience (or the dramatists, for that matter). Religious hypocrisy and pompousness has always been a rich source of humour, from Chaucer's Monk and Friar to Wilde's Canon Chasuble and Trollope's Mr Slope. But the Church of England in Jacobean times was protected from mockery by a very tight political censorship. Martin Marprelate had been highly successful in making fun of the bishops; but fun like that could be a hanging matter. So although we know that there was a strong element of anti-clericalism and scepticism about the established Church among Londoners, satire against pious hypocrisy and godly greed was possible on the stage only against Puritans, or (if one did not mind shifting the scene to Italy or Spain) against friars and cardinals, so that it chimed with a widespread and traditional anti-Popery among craftsmen and lower orders.

A roll-call of Jacobean dramatis personae, at least in plays with a contemporary rather than a historical setting, shows clergymen of the Church of England almost entirely absent. There are Anglican bishops in the militant Protestant chronicle-romances dramatising the Reformation and the glorious reign of Elizabeth, in plays like When You See Me You Know Me and If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody.