The Little French Lawyer is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.
Date
Definite information on the play's date of authorship and early performance history is lacking. Scholars generally date the play to the 1619–23 period. The second Beaumont/Fletcher folio of 1679 provides a cast list for the play, which includes Joseph Taylor, Nicholas Tooley, John Lowin, William Ecclestone, John Underwood, Richard Sharpe, Robert Benfield, and Thomas Holcombe. This is the same cast of actors from the King's Men that the folio gives for The Custom of the Country and Women Pleased, plays that are thought to date from the same era. These plays must have premiered between the Spring of 1619, when Taylor joined the troupe, and June 1623, when Tooley died.
Authorship
Given Fletcher's highly distinctive style and mannerisms, the division of shares of authorship in the play is relatively clear. Cyrus Hoy offered a delineation that generally agreed with those of other critics:
Massinger – Act I; Act III, scene 3; Act IV, 5; Act V, 3; Fletcher – Act II; Act III, scenes 1, 2, and 4; Act IV, 1–4; Act V, 2; Fletcher and Massinger – Act IV, scenes 6–7; Act V, 1.
The play's closing couplet is similar to the closing couplet in The Sea Voyage, another of the dramatists' collaborations.
The Little French Lawyer provides repeated displays of the two playwrights' habit of re-using characters' names from play to play. Dinant, Cleremont, Lamira and Beaupre all re-appear in Massinger's The Parliament of Love; Cleremont also previously appeared in Fletcher's Philaster and The Noble Gentleman. Lamira and Charlotte are used in The Honest Man's Fortune, and Verdon is found in Rollo Duke of Normandy.
Sources
The plot of the play is based on a story by Massuccio di Salerno (his Il novellino, novella xli), perhaps in the version in Guzmán de Alfarache by Mateo Alemán (1599, 1605). The plot bears resemblances with several other plays of the era – the Beaumont and Fletcher play The Scornful Lady, John Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, Massinger's The Parliament of Love, and A Cure for a Cuckold, by John Webster and William Rowley.
In the Restoration
The play was revived during the Restoration era, being performed at the Inner Temple in 1670, probably at Candlemas, 2 February. It was staged again in 1717; and scenes from the play were adapted for a farce, acted under the play's name at Drury Lane in 1749.
Synopsis
The play is set in Paris, and opens with two Frenchmen, the friends Dinant and Cleremont, discussing the ethics and manners of duelling. Dinant is disconsolate, because the woman he loves, Lamira, is marrying a rich old man named Champernell. Champernell won fame and fortune fighting at sea; but now he is crippled in an arm and a leg. Dinant and Cleremont confront the wedding party as they leave the church; the two mock and insult the new-made man and wife. Champernell tries to fight back, but his injuries prevent him; both groom and bride are reduced to tears of frustration (him) and embarrassment (her). They are not without defenders, however: afterward, Lamira's brother Beaupre and Champernell's nephew Verdone meet Dinant and Cleremont, and challenge them to meet on the "field of honor".
The challenge is spied upon, by Lamira's old Nurse; Lamira foresaw this event, and is terrified that her brother will be killed by Dinant. To avoid this, Lamira summons Dinant, and complains that her honor has been insulted. Dinant agrees to meet her slanderer and defend her, even though he will miss his appointment with Beaupre and Verdone. Cleremont makes that appointment in a cold dawn, and is distressed to find himself alone against two potential combatants. To avoid fighting both or yielding his sword, he must obtain a second. He solicits passers-by but finds no one, until he encounters a diminutive lawyer named La-Writ, who is poring over his court documents as he walks toward the city. Cleremont manages to bully, cajole, and persuade the attorney to second him in the duel, even though La-Writ has never drawn his sword in anger in his life. Through a stroke of beginner's luck, La-Writ manages to disarm Beaupre, and then rescue Cleremont by disarming Verdone too. The two losers have to return to the city without their swords, and a buoyant-spirited La-Writ resumes his way.