Shoemakers in medieval London enjoyed a rather surprising cachet. Medieval legends of the patron saint of shoemakers, St. Crispin, allude to his humble origins and strong work ethic. Late Medieval English writers such as Thomas Deloney gloss these legends to explain the "worthy deeds and great hospitality" of the shoemaker. Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights such as Thomas Dekker and William Rowley brought the archetypical humble and hospitable craftsman and his family onto the comedic stage before the English royalty, as well as the London public at large. Therefore, when a courtly gentleman such as John Dowland (despite his painful lack of a permanent court appointment) thought of the shoemaker's profession, he would have ready-made images of a noble peasant who was courteous, hospitable, generous, and possessed of a goodly sense of humour. This is most likely the kind of character Dowland had in mind when he composed his lute solo entitled for The Shoemaker's Wife, a Toy.

Dowland expands upon (as does a large proportion of his music for solo lute) one of the courtly dances of his time. In this case, it is a corrente (coranto in the Elizabethan's popular Italianate jargon), an uptempo triple-meter dance of courtship and erotic chase. The dancers' erotically charged steps are driven by the musicians' strong rhythmic agenda. In Dowland's case, he has impelled the dancers by the power of his "divisions," the virtuosic embellishments he adds to the repeat of each musical phrase. In each case, he presents the principal dance melody in a reasonably straightforward manner, and then allows his musical fancy to run wild, even upon the charged melody just presented. His noble peasant, and the peasant's wife, are not only showing off their good and robust natures, they are flirtatiously strutting their plumage.

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