The Critic (play)

One of its major roles, Sir Fretful Plagiary, is a comment on the vanity of authors, and in particular a caricature of the dramatist Richard Cumberland who was a contemporary of Sheridan.

In 1911, Herbert Beerbohm Tree mounted a star-studded production of The Critic at Her Majesty's Theatre starring George Alexander, Cecil Armstrong, Beatrice Ferrar, Arthur Bourchier, C. Hayden Coffin, Kenneth Douglas, Lily Elsie, Winifred Emery, George Graves, George Grossmith Jr., Edmund Gurney, John Harwood, Charles Hawtrey, Helen Haye, Laurence Irving, Cyril Maude, Gerald du Maurier, Gertie Millar, Edmund Payne, Courtice Pounds, Marie Tempest, Violet Vanbrugh and Arthur Williams.

[citation needed] The play was adapted as an opera in two acts by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford; it received its premiere in London in 1916.

[2] The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC, premiered the play in an updated version by Jeffrey Hatcher on 5 January 2016.

[7] Conversely, The Guardian's Michael Billington said that "when Mr Sneer talks of a moralising writer whose idea is 'to dramatise the penal laws', he seems to be anticipating our own move towards edifying verbatim theatre.