The play illustrates the hardening of class distinctions that characterised the early Stuart era, leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. In Elizabethan plays like "The Shoemaker's Holiday" (1599), it was acceptable and even admirable that a young nobleman marry a commoner's daughter; other plays of the era, like "Fair Em" (c. 1590) and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (c. 1597–9), share this liberal attitude toward social mobility through marriage. In "A New Way to Pay Old Debts", in contrast, Lord Lovell would rather see his family line go extinct than marry Over-reach's daughter Margaret, even though she is young, beautiful, and virtuous. In Act IV, scene i, Lovell specifies that his attitude is not solely dependent on his loathing of the father's personal vices, but is rooted in class distinction. Lovell rejects the idea of his descendants being "one part scarlet" (aristocratic) and "the other London blue" (common).