A new play is scheduled, but Richard Brinsley Sheridan hasn't written it yet, so his company locks him in his room with a bottle of claret, paper, pen and ink, and won't let him out until it is finished. We then see the play performed.
THE CRITIC was Sheridan's sixth play, a rewrite of 1672's THE REHEARSAL, which was originally published anonymously, but has been pretty well settled as being a collaboration between George Villiers and one or more other individuals: possibly Samuel Butler, Martin Clifford and Thomas Sprat. It was a satire aimed at Dryden. In Sheridan's rewrite, the author is a liar and a fool, convinced of his own genius, who excuses his frequent theft of lines from Shakespeare and other sources as "two men have the same thought". The action takes place during a dress rehearsal in which the author, played by Thomas Hywell, explains all the artificialities as standards of the stage, and his friends marvel at their "contrivance".
Don Taylor's rewrite and staging of the play is an excellent one, with Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood playing selections of Restoration music, but it is, as offered, one of Sheridan's lesser works. Its satire works in the older manner, making fun of a target that cannot fight back. While those of us who have studied drama and literature of this era may find a great deal of pleasure in its careful staging and superior performers (including John Gielgud and Nigel Hawthorne), trying to gain some pleasure in the antique rivalries that produced it is like studying entomology by looking at bugs in amber. The fun is far more ill-humored than in works like THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL or THE RIVALS.