John Liston (1776-1846) achieved his greatest successes in farce, particularly as the interfering busybody Paul Pry, but was well known for several other roles, including the role depicted in this engraving, the fanatical evangelical preacher Maw-Worm in Bickerstaffe's comedy The Hypocrite. Liston first played the role in a revival of the play at Drury Lane Theatre in 1823. An expert dancer, by the time he retired Liston was the highest-paid comedian on the London stage, earning between sixty and a hundred pounds a week at the Olympic Theatre, a huge salary for his day. He retired in 1837 after a career that spanned over thirty years.

The playwright Isaac Bickerstaffe (1733-1812) was principally engaged by David Garrick at Drury Lane Theatre as an adapter, and worked on adaptations of several French plays between 1756 and 1771. The Hypocrite,first produced in 1768, was perhaps his most successful adaptation. It was taken from Colley Cibber's Non-Juror, in turn a version of Moliere's Tartuffe. In his preface to the play Bickerstaffe noted that he had based the character Doctor Woolf on Moliere's Tartuffe. The character Maw-Worm was a new character however, originally introduced by Bickerstaff for the comedian Thomas Weston.