 Although this company usually performed at the rowdy, open-air Red Bull Theatre, May's play was first performed privately (according to its only published edition), and is tonally ill-suited to a plebeian city audience.During the early 1620s May befriended the courtier, poet and diplomat Thomas Carew, who contributed a poem to the published text of "The Heir" in 1622, and probably also Philip Massinger.Massinger wrote at least one play for the short-lived Revels company ("The Virgin Martyr", with Thomas Dekker) and shared May's generally Roman interests.