The second afterpiece here reproduced, THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, OR THE PLAGUE OF ENVY (Larpent 64), is an amusing bit of dramatic criticism of Benjamin Hoadly's _The Suspicious Husband_ which had opened at the Covent Garden Theatre on February 12, 1747, and was given many times including performances on March 21, 24 and April 28, 30 of the same year.[6] Again the title page of the Macklin afterpiece bears the handwritten request of James Lacy, dated March 17, 1747, for the Lord Chamberlain's permission to perform the play for Macklin's benefit at Drury Lane on March 24. Both performances, then, of Macklin's closely related afterpiece, THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, were given at Drury Lane on nights when Hoadly's _The Suspicious Husband_ was also being performed at the rival theatre, March 24 and April 30, 1747. It was even possible for a spectator to see Hoadly's play at Covent Garden and then catch Macklin's related farcical afterpiece at the Drury Lane Theatre on the same night. Or if that required too difficult a change of _locus_, it was still possible to see _The Suspicious Husband_ on March 21 or April 28 and THE SUSPICIOUS HUSBAND CRITICIZ'D (as Macklin's play is entitled in James T. Kirkman's _Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq._, II, 443) a few days later on March 24 or April 30; such was the immediacy of the appeal of Macklin's afterpiece. While Macklin was capitalizing on the popularity of a new play, he also, in THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, gave ironic portraits of rival playwrights who damned a play out of envy (note the subtitle, THE PLAGUE OF ENVY) for such trivial faults as the use of _suspicious_ instead of _jealous_ in the title, or for the lacing of Ranger's hat. Macklin's satiric portraits of such envious scribblers who were ready to attack any new author in Journals, Epigrams, and Pamphlets are lively records of mid-eighteenth century subjective criticism. Canker, the envious playwright in the afterpiece, calls Ranger "a Harlequin" and Mr. Strickland, "Columbine's husband." Canker objects to the escapes, scenes in the dark, and the rope ladder, though the young lovers, Heartly and Harriet in Macklin's afterpiece, vow the ladder is a device they themselves will use if Harriet is forced by her aunt to marry Canker. Again an Irishman, Sir Patrick Bashfull, enlivens the farce by his pretense of being a Frenchman, Fitzbashfull, "of Irish distraction." Bashfull's literal criticism of Hoadly's play serves as a good foil for the carping criticism of the envious playwrights: Plagiary, Grubwit, and Canker; or the nonsense of the foolish critics: Nibble and Trifle. The farce ends with Canker completely routed and Heartly's suggestion that their hour's conversation would make a _petit piece_ in itself if Lady Critick would only write it down.