Sources
Many aspects of the play are drawn from Fielding's own experiences. During Act II, the characters Marplay and Sparkish, two theatre managers, offer poor advice to Luckless on how to improve his play, which they then reject. This fictional event mirrors Fielding's own life when Colley Cibber and Robert Wilks of the Theatre Royal rejected The Temple Beau. Cibber was an inspiration for the character of Marplay and Wilks for Sparkish, but Sparkish does not appear in the revised version of 1734, after Wilks's death. In his place Fielding introduces a character who mocks Theophilus Cibber, Colley's son, and his role in the Actor Rebellion of 1733. Another biographical parallel involves the relationship between Luckless and Mrs Moneywood, which is similar to Fielding's own relationship with Jan Oson, his landlord during his stay in Leiden in early 1729. There Fielding incurred a debt of about £13 (equivalent to about £1,760 as of 2008), and a legal case was brought against him. Abandoning his personal property, Fielding fled to London; Oson's seizure of Fielding's possessions mirrors Mrs Moneywood's threats to seize those belonging to Luckless. Other characters are modelled on well-known personalities of whom Fielding was aware though they were not personal acquaintances:: Mrs Novel is Eliza Haywood, a writer, actress, and publisher; Signior Opera is Senesino, a famous Italian contralto castrato; Bookweight is similar to Edmund Curll, a bookseller and publisher known for unscrupulous publication and publicity; Orator is John Henley, a clergyman, entertainer, and well-known orator; Monsieur Pantomime is John Rich, a director and theatre manager; and Don Tragedio is Lewis Theobald, an editor and author. Sir Farcical Comick is another version of Colley Cibber, but only in his role as an entertainer.
Fielding drew inspiration from many literary sources and traditions as well as from his own life. The structure and plot of The Author's Farce are similar to those of George Farquhar's Love and a Bottle (1698), in that both plays describe the relationship between an author and his landlady. The plays only deal with the same generalized idea however; the particulars of each are different. Fielding also drew on the Scriblerus Club's use of satire and the humour common to traditional Restoration and Augustan drama. Many of Luckless's situations are similar to those found within various traditional British dramas, including Buckingham's The Rehearsal (1672), a satirical play about staging a play. It is possible that Pope's Dunciad Variorum, published on 13 March 1729, influenced the themes of the play and the plot of the puppet show. The Court of Nonsense in the puppet show are related to the Court of Dulness in The Dunciad and the Court of Nonsense in John Dryden's Mac Flecknoe. The Scriblerus Club style of humour as a whole influences The Author's Farce, and it is possible that Fielding borrowed from Gay's Three Hours after Marriage (1717) and The Beggar's Opera (1728). In turn, Fielding's play influenced later Scriblerus Club works, especially Pope's fourth book of his revised Dunciad and possibly Gay's The Rehearsal at Goatham.
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