one sense, therefore, he can lay claim to originality; fortunately this merit in his case is supported by a really poetic imagination. In [Engaged] the author gives full swing to his humor, and the result, although exceedingly ephemeral, is a very amusing combination of characters – or caricatures – and mock-heroic incidents." In a later assessment, T. Edgar Pemberton called the piece "whimsically conceived and wittily written" and judged it "a gem of the first water, with its every facet cut and polished to the point of resplendency". Reviewing the National Theatre's production in 1975, Irving Wardle thought Engaged "a play that falls short of the world masterpiece class, but that merits revival as a popular entertainment expressing its own period with unusual clarity". Michael Billington called it "rather a stolid jape", although he later called it an unjustly neglected classic. Reviewers of the 1983 London revival were divided: in The Guardian, Kenneth Hurren thought it apart from "a few quaint jocularities, merely a tedious old play". while in The Times, Anthony Masters thought it "mercilessly honest and extremely funny … with a cynicism that makes Ben Jonson and Wycherley seem full of the milk of human kindness". More recent productions have been well received. Patrick O'Connor wrote of the 2003 Orange Tree production, "What is delightful in the complicated plot, with its insistence on the mercenary side of love and friendship, is that many of the lines have a contemporary ring to them and the situations seem to foreshadow the theatre of the absurd". Reviewing the 2004 Off-Broadway production, Marilyn Stasio wrote in Variety, "a sparkling period piece … the dialogue is a pure gift from a brilliant dramatist and thoroughly dyspeptic man". In a 2016 study of the makers of modern culture, Justin Wintle called Engaged "unquestionably the finest and funniest English comedy between Bulwer-Lytton's Money [1840] and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest [1895] which it directly inspired". Influence In a 1971 study of Gilbert's works, Arthur Liebman remarks on the debt The Importance of Being Earnest owed to Engaged: "similarities in situations, characters, names, dialogue and stage effects which are indeed inescapable to the knowledgeable reader". Bernard Shaw, in his capacity as a theatre critic, remarked – disapprovingly – on the "Gilbertism" of Wilde's plot. Shaw thought himself a better writer than Gilbert and resented being seen as Gilbertian, but Liebman cites the influence of Engaged