The City Nightcap

The City Nightcap, or Crede Quod Habes, et Habes is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Robert Davenport. It is one of only three dramatic works by Davenport that survive.

The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 24 October 1624. Many commentators have assumed that the play was written not long before that date. The play's "heavy borrowing" from Shakespeare seems to suggest that it must have been written after the 1623 publication of the First Folio.

The question of the play's date is complicated by one internal factor: in Act III, scene 3, Dorothea states that when her maid put "a little saffron in her starch," she "most unmercifully broke her head." This is a reference to the fashion for yellow-dyed ruffs and cuffs that was current c. 1615, and was closely associated with Mistress Anne Turner and her execution for her role in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury (15 November 1615). Allusions to "yellow bands" and "yellow starch" are common in plays written in the 1615–18 period, but somewhat dated in a play from the early 1620s. (Davenport's A New Trick to Cheat the Devil, another play of uncertain date, also includes a yellow-starch reference.)

Davenport based the main plot and subplot for his play on two prose works, the Philomela of Robert Greene and one of the stories in the Decameron of Boccaccio (the seventh story of the seventh day). Greene's story involves a jealous husband and a faithful wife, while Boccaccio's considers a confidant husband and an unfaithful wife. Davenport combines and contrasts the two stories to create a dialectic on marital fidelity and trust.

The plot also bears resemblances to the "Curious Impertinent" episode in Don Quixote.

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