The Little French Lawyer

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.

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.

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:

The play's closing couplet is similar to the closing couplet in The Sea Voyage, another of the dramatists' collaborations.

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