- 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
In the first act finale, the Peachum family approaches the front of the stage to sing a song to the audience directly. Their lives are in shambles—Peachum is having trouble wrangling his army of beggars, who are dissatisfied with their work and frustrated by the upper classes’ inability to empathize with their plight; Polly is married to a man her parents disapprove of and are scheming to have arrested; Mrs. Peachum laments not having been able to prepare her daughter better for the pitfalls of love, lust, and life as a woman. All three of the Peachums, in a classically…