Produced three years after the Hanoverian Succession and two after the outbreak of the 1715 Rebellion, the play was sharply critical of Jacobites and their Tory allies.
It mockingly exaggerated the position of those who refused to swear allegiance to George I. Cibber himself played the title role of Doctor Wolf, a nonjuring Church of England clergyman who claims that "a Protestant Church can never be secure, till it has a Popish Prince to defend it".
The anti-Catholic tone of the work offended Alexander Pope, himself a nonjuring Catholic, who lamented "the great success of so damn'd a play".
The prologue by Nicholas Rowe contained jibes against Catholics currently buying up property in Urbino, the Italian residence of the Jacobite pretender James III.
In 1768 a rewritten version The Hypocrite by Isaac Bickerstaffe appeared at Drury Lane.