Note 549 — Chapter XXIII · (continued 2)
Reading edition
Dryden reckons this play with the Spanish Curate, the Chances, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, among those which he supposes to be drawn from Spanish novels. Essay on Dramatic Poetry, p. 204. By novels we should probably understand plays; for those which he mentions are little in the style of novels. But the Little French Lawyer has all the appearance of coming from a French novel; the scene lies in France, and I see nothing Spanish about it. Dryden was seldom well-informed about the early stage.