- 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
Sir Peter is visiting his neighbor Lady Sneerwell, but he disapproves of the way the gossips mock their acquaintances. He is fed up with listening to one of his good friends be mocked and expresses his disapproval to them as an eloquently stated moral sentiment. The gossips, however, use his words as an occasion to show off their wit, as well as their cynical view of morality. Lady Teazle jokes that wit and good-nature (that is, morality) are like a brother and sister: too closely related to be married. Sir Benjamin, in a jab particularly likely to wound Sir Peter…