The Mock Doctor - Critical Response

Critical Response

The 26 June 1732 Daily Post reported that the play was shown to "a full House, with great applause" and that "Le Medecin Malgre Lui, of Molier, from whence the Mock-Doctor is taken, bears the greatest reputation of any petite Piece in the French language; and many good Judges allow the English Farce is no way inferior to the Original." The Grub-Street Journal disagreed with the reporting and printed on 29 June and 20 July 1772 that Fielding performed a disservice to the original. The 24 August 1732 Grub-Street Journal stated that the play was favoured by audiences but gave all credit to Molière and the actors instead of to Fielding. Later, John Hill, a rival to Fielding, admitted in the 13 January 1752 London Daily Advertiser that the play defined the English farce.

Harold Pagliaro connects The Mock Doctor with The Covent-Garden Opera and says that they are able to make "its nominal subject subordinate to a different purpose: writing a funny play about something else." Robert Hume believes that "Fielding benefited greatly from taking over the well-crafted frame of Molière's play, but what he provided by way of adaptation and additions he handled with great skill." The Battestins argue that the play "in time became the standard of its kind, the light farce". Ronald Paulson attributes the success of this adaptation to Fielding's later adaptation of Molière's The Miser.