Ever pointing fingers, Mrs. Crackenthorpe blames the audience, in part, for the pretenses of the players. "If the town would not tantalise ‘em further than to give ‘em loud claps on every just performance, and despise ‘em when the play’s over, they’d value themselves upon good action only: but when people of note shall caress ‘em, and embrace ‘em, they forget they are but parrots of other men’s elaborate studies, and begin to value themselves upon realities" (no. 6). At the heart of Mrs. Crackenthorpe’s critique stands hostility toward actors’ ability to live extravagantly and mix with persons of quality, without having the breeding and pedigree of quality.

Mrs. Crackenthorpe also rails against establishing preachers as celebrities. She writes that she has observed in churches, "if the divine expected happens not to preach, half the church empties at a strange face" (no. 37). Such behavior, she suggests, offends both God and the speaker.

seen in London (nos. 43 & 12). Clearly Mrs. Crackenthorpe treats her own celebrity with humor—that is, her solicitation of Jonathan Richardson’s attention, for example, aims for comic effect—but her exalting of her own status also draws attention to the way in which her critique of celebrity centers around class issues. Actresses and preachers should not be fashioned as celebrities because doing so grants them an inappropriately prominent status and distracts them from their appointed tasks, while Mrs. Crackenthorpe’s sense of self-importance is appropriate to her station.