The Mistaken Husband is a Restoration comedy in the canon of John Dryden's dramatic works, where it has constituted a long-standing authorship problem.
The play was first produced on stage by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1674, and was first published in a 1675 quarto issued by the booksellers James Magnes and Richard Bentley.
[1] Bentley's statement may not be literally precise, and may mean that Dryden gave the anonymous original a light revision of some extent.
Alfred Harbage argued, on the basis of internal evidence of plotting, style, and subject matter, that both The Mistaken Husband and another problematical Dryden work, The Wild Gallant, were based on otherwise-unknown plays by Richard Brome.
Nine years after these events, Manley tells his tale to Hazard, a clever but conniving gentleman (the play's Dramatis personae terms him "a cunning shifting fellow").
Hazard's schemes grow more extreme: he robs Learcut of an additional £1000, has Underwit imprison the old cheesemonger, and tells Mrs. Manley that her father has drowned.
The marriage is legally void, since Manley has abandoned his wife for more than seven years; and he is ready to leave the "Skittish Jade, and have money to boot."