Mrs. Centlivre followed the practices of her contemporaries in borrowing the plot for The Busie Body.  The three sources for the play are:  The Devil Is an Ass (1616) by Jonson; L’Etourdi (1658) by Moliere; and Sir Martin Mar-all or The Feigned Innocence (1667) by Dryden.  From The Devil Is an Ass, Mrs. Centlivre borrowed minor details and two episodes, one of them the amusing dumb scene.  This scene, though a close imitation, seems more amusing in The Busie Body than in Jonson’s play, perhaps because the characters, especially Sir Francis Gripe and Miranda, are more credible and more fully portrayed.  From the second source for The Busie Body, Moliere’s L’Etourdi, I believe Mrs. Centlivre borrowed the framework for her parallel plots, the theme of Marplot’s blundering, and the name and general character of Marplot.  But she has improved what she borrowed.  She places in Moliere’s framework more credible women characters than his, especially in the charming Miranda and the crafty Patch; she constructs a more skillful intrigue plot for the stage than his subplot and emphasizes Spanish customs in the lively Charles-Isabinda-Traffick plot.  Mrs. Centlivre concentrates on Marplot’s blundering, whereas Moliere concentrates on the servant Mascarille’s schemes.  Marplot’s funniest blunder, in the “monkey” scene, is entirely original as far as I know (IV, iv).  But her greatest change is in the character of Marplot, who in her hands becomes not so much stupid as human and irresistibly ludicrous.  Mrs. Centlivre’s style is of course inferior to that of Moliere.  In the preface to Love’s Contrivance (1703), in speaking of borrowings from Moliere, she said that borrowers “must take care to touch the Colors with an English Pencil, and form the Piece according to our Manners.”  Of course her touching the “Colors with an English Pencil” meant changing the style of Moliere to suit the less delicate taste of the middle-class English audience.

A third source for The Busie Body is Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all (1667).  Since Dryden followed Moliere with considerable exactness, it would be difficult to prove beyond doubt that Mrs. Centlivre borrowed from Moliere rather than from Dryden.  Yet I believe, after a careful analysis of the plays, that she borrowed from Moliere.  She made of The Busie Body a comedy of intrigue based on the theme and plot used by both Moliere and Dryden, but she omitted the scandalous Restoration third plot which Dryden had added to Moliere.  Her characters are English in speech and action, but they lack the coarseness apparent in Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all.  Though it is impossible to prove the exact sources of Mrs. Centlivre’s borrowings, there is no doubt that she has improved what she borrowed.