The Little French Lawyer is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger.
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.
[5] 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 play is set in Paris, and opens with two Frenchmen, the friends Dinant and Cleremont, discussing the ethics and manners of duelling.
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).
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.
Verdone explains that Dinant did not appear that morning, but that his place was taken by "a Devil hir'd from some Magician,/ I'th' shape of an Attorney".
La-Writ is now so passionate about quarreling that he fails to appear in court, and his cases are dismissed by the judge Vertaigne (who is also Lamira's father).
Sampson is driven off, and Champernell beats La-Writ until the repentant attorney agrees to give up fighting and return to lawyering once again.
When Champernell is introduced in the play's opening scene, the text states that he has suffered "The loss of a leg and an arm" – raising the question of how this was managed in the original stage production.