- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
This passage comes from the parabasis, the part of an Ancient Greek comedy in which the Chorus, addressing the audience, conveys the play’s central ideas and offers advice to the audience. Here, the Chorus states its two core purposes: “To amuse you, citizens, and to advise.” Though the play is a comedy and should entertain its audience, it has a more serious and important purpose: to educate and instill good values in its audience, just as the works of tragic theater (i.e., the works of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles) the play repeatedly espouses did. Interestingly, though the play repeatedly…