The _Eunuchus_ is also the origin of _Le Muet_ by Bruyes and Palaprat, who laboured in conjunction, like our Beaumont and Fletcher, and who have made such alterations on the Latin drama as they thought advisable in their age and country. In this play, which was first acted in 1691, a young man, who feigns to be dumb, is introduced as a page in a house where his mistress resided. But although an Ethiopian eunuch, which was an article of state among the ancients, may have attracted the fancy of Thais, it is not probable that the French countess should have been so desirous to receive a present of a dumb page. Those scenes in which the credulous father is made to believe that his son had lost the power of speech, from the effects of love and sorcery, and is persuaded, by a valet disguised as a doctor, that the only remedy for his dumbness is an immediate union with the object of his passion, are improbable and overcharged. The character of the parasite is omitted, and instead of Thraso we have a rough blunt sea captain, who had protected Zayde when lost by her parents. The only English imitation of the _Eunuchus_ is _Bellamira, or the Mistress_, an unsuccessful comedy by Sir Charles Sedley, first printed in 1687. In this play the scene lies in London, but there is otherwise hardly any variation in the incidents; and there is no novelty introduced, except Bellamira and Merryman’s plot of robbing Dangerfield, the braggart captain of the piece, an incident evidently borrowed from Shakspeare’s Henry IV.