 "The Lover's Melancholy" is based on Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy"; Ford draws on Burton most heavily in the play's masque of the mad (Act III, scene iii).The play also features a competition between a musician and a nightingale that draws upon the "Academic Prolusions" of Famiano Strada (1617).The same poetic trope was also exploited by Richard Crashaw, Ambrose Philips, and other poets.