(Pepys interpreted the play as a veiled criticism of Charles's conduct with his mistress, and wrote that he had expected the King to interrupt the performance — though this did not occur.)
In his Preface to the 1668 edition, Howard states that the King's Company had possessed an old play on the subject of the Duke of Lerma — an "unfit" thing that was yet "written with higher Style and Thoughts than I could attain to."
[3] Other scholars have suggested that the old play reworked by Howard was The Spanish Duke of Lerma, a lost drama by Henry Shirley that was entered into the Stationers' Register on 9 September 1653 but never published.
The two contrasting styles within The Great Favourite may yield some insight into the extent of Howard's rewrite versus the surviving portions of the original text.
"[5] The Duke is a cynical and blasphemous manipulator who promotes his own followers and opposes the established nobility; he is willing to prostitute his daughter Maria to gain influence over the young prince Philip; he even plots the murder of the Queen Mother.