"Know your place” is, in a sentence, the message powerfully presented in Philip Massinger’s hugely entertaining play The City Madam. The latest of the Swan’s happy discoveries from the work of Shakespeare’s near contemporaries, which have included the same writer’s The Roman Actor, closes with an emphatic expression of the need for there to be “ a distance ’twixt the city and the court”.

The speaker is Sir John Frugal (Christopher Godwin) who urges this conduct upon his wife Lady Frugal (Sara Crowe), the ‘madam’ of the title and, in modern parlance, a right proper madam to boot (as your foot itches to do). Previously, she has shown consummate skill in the aping of her superiors, with a haughty contempt for all and a greed for the good things in life matched only by that of her two pampered daughters, Anne (Lucy Briggs-Owen) and Mary (Matti Houghton).

The menage most brought to mind is Baron Hardup’s in Cinderella, except that Frugal, though his name suggests otherwise, is able and willing to use his spectacular riches to satisfy the outrageous demands of his womenfolk. There is even a ‘Cinders’ figure — seated always ‘below the salt’, dispatched daily on demeaning errands — in the shape of Sir Hugh’s scapegrace brother Luke (Jo Stone-Fewings).

The mood shifts decisively when the two daughters drive off their respective suitors — the preening aristocrat Sir Maurice (Alex Hassell) and the bluff, self-made Mr Plenty (Felix Hayes) — through their imperious demands in a proposed ‘pre-nup’ agreement. Sir John recognises that things have gone too far and retires to contemplative life in a monastery.

The time is right for Luke to rise ‘from the ashes’. Now the focus of the action, he presents the audience with a delicious conundrum. Is he the decent, pious man he has previously appeared, or is he a hypocrite, a master of rhetoric able to argue any case convincingly?

This is a play couched in wonderful language, presented under director Dominic Hill in a lapel-grabbing, ‘in yer face’ style — beware, prospective audience members, of very loud bangs.

Not the least of its fascinating features are various episodes in which, it would seem, ideas have been borrowed — intentionally or not — from Shakespeare.

These include ‘statues’ that come to life, as in The Winter’s Tale; the putting in place of a tiresome, headstrong woman (guess who? — and how skilful of Ms Crowe to wring sympathy for her!) — in the manner of Petruchio’s ‘taming’ of Kate; and an up-close observation of the misrule of a deputy made by a supposedly absent ‘Mr Big’, as practised by Duke Vicentio in Measure for Measure.

In common with that last play, The City Madam supplies memorable depictions of low life, none lower than prostitute Shave’Em, gleefully presented in basque and frilly knickers style by Pippa Nixon. Don’t miss.

n Until October 4. Tickets: www.rsc.org.uk or 0844 800 1110.