Which English play influenced Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson?

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German dramatist and critic Gotthold Lessing — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Gotthold Lessing, detail of an oil painting by Georg May, 1768; in the Gleimhaus, Halberstadt, Germany.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson (1755) was inspired by the English play The London Merchant (1731), written by George Lillo.1

In addition to Lillo’s work, the play was influenced by the novels of Samuel Richardson, which emphasized middle-class feminine virtue, and to a lesser extent, by the French comédie larmoyante ("tearful comedy"). As the first major bürgerliches Trauerspiel (domestic tragedy) in German literature, Miss Sara Sampson marked a decisive break from the classical French drama that had previously dominated the German stage, allowing middle-class characters to bear the full weight of a tragic fate.12