Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600) features a band of actors who rehearse their tragedy, The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby, with hilarious results. Act 5 of A Midsummer Night's Dream features the play's performance.

Like The Critic, Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off (1982) consists of rehearsals for a play where nothing happens as it should. Like A Midsummer Night's Dream, Noises Off ends with the audience watching the play they just saw being rehearsed.

The Rivals (1775), Sheridan's first play, is a comedy concerning the thwarted (but eventually reconciled) love between Captain Absolute and Lydia Languish. The play is famous for the character of Mrs. Malaprop, Lydia's aunt who makes a number of "malapropisms," humorous linguistic errors ("As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile").

Sheridan's The School for Scandal (1777), considered by many to...