Though Massinger's play shows obvious debts to Thomas Middleton's "A Trick to Catch the Old One" (c. 1605), it transcends mere imitation to achieve a powerful dramatic effectiveness – verified by the fact that, apart from the Shakespearean canon, it was almost the only pre-Restoration play that was continuously in the dramatic repertory through much of the modern era. After David Garrick's 1748 revival, the play remained popular throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. (It was praised by Thomas Jefferson.) Edmund Kean's version of Sir Giles, which debuted in 1816, was in particular a tremendous popular success, and drove the play's reputation through the remainder of the century.