[47] This translation of three French novels, whose original source had been Spanish, was issued again in 1712 as Three Ingenious Spanish Novels. See Chandler, Romances of Roguery, New York, 1899, pp. 462–3. These novels are ultimately based on La Garduna de Sevilla of Castillo Solorzano. It is also to be noticed that the story appears in La Villana de Ballecas by Tirso de Molina, in La Ocasion hace al ladron, by Moreto, and in the story of Aurora in Le Sage’s Gil Blas. Dunlop, History of Prose Fiction, II, 475, states that She Would and She Would Not is taken from Gil Blas. Gil Blas was published thirteen years later than Cibber’s play.
[48] Wilkes, General View of the Stage, p. 40, says that were the play curtailed of one scene he “would not fail to pronounce it not only the best comedy in English, but in any other language.”
[49] Boswell’s Johnson, edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, London, 1891; I, 201.
[50] Preface to The Double Gallant.
[51] II, 173.
[52] Apology, I, 243.
[53] III, 209. See also Thomes Whincop’s Scanderbeg, (1747), p. 195. An account of the lives and writings of the English dramatists is annexed to this play.
[54] Following the Scottish rebellion in 1715, Lord Derwentwater and Lord Kenmure were executed, February 24, 1716. The king’s pardon, which excepted forty-seven classes of offenders, appears in The Historical Register for 1717, II, 247; so that the excitement caused by the rebellion continued for some time. Doran’s London in Jacobite Times discusses this period in a most interesting manner.
[55] The second title of The Female Virtuosoes.
[56] Apology, II, 58.