Eugène Labiche was born on May 5, 1815. Labiche was a French dramatist who wrote about 175 plays, the majority of which were light comedies or vaudevilles, and the remaining plays were comedies of manners. Labiche died in 1883.

Marc-Michel was a French playwright, poet, and journalist. He was born Marc-Antoine-Amédée Michel in Marseille in 1812. His most well-known work is Un Chapeau de paille d'Italie (AN ITALIAN STRAW HAT), which he wrote in collaboration with Eugène Labiche. Marc-Michel died in 1868.

Kenneth McLeish (1940 – 1997) studied Classics and Music at Worcester College, Oxford. After starting as a schoolteacher, he became a full-time translator, author, and dramatist, and in time the most widely respected and prolific translator of drama in Britain. His output included all 47 of the surviving classical Greek plays, most of Ibsen and Feydeau, as well as individual plays by Plautus, Molière, Jarry, Strindberg, Horvath, and Labiche. His original plays and translations have been widely performed, most notably by England's National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.