 Clive Barnes of "The New York Times" pronounced the piece "slight and boring"; Howard Kissel commented more approvingly, observing, "farce is an enterprise whose esthetics are not always appreciated by the undiscerning".The literary scholar Joseph O'Mealy writes that "Habeas Corpus", like Tom Stoppard's "Travesties" which was staged a year later, was strongly influenced by Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest".O'Mealy finds echoes of Wilde's Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen in Lady Rumpers and Felicity, and of Wilde's linguistic absurdities in some of Bennett's dialogue.