Plume, the recruiting officer, who has arrived Shrewsbury from London, is informed by his Sergeant, Kite about the state of the market for recruits and love. Recruiting is going badly, but Victoria, the justice's daughter, who a year earlier had been in pigtails, has been visiting a girl put in the family way by Plume. Plume gives his friend the shoe manufacturer, Worthy, a word of advice in matters of the heart and in return Worthy offers him a handsome commission on boots, which Worthy needs soldiers to fill. Brecht takes George Farquhar's Restoration comedy, The Recruiting Officer, and transfers it to the period of the American Revolutionary War.