Enduringly popular less for its plots than for its verbal brilliance and wit, The School for Scandal (1777) was the most frequently performed play of its time. Sir Peter Teazle has made the perennial mistake of elderly bachelors in English comedy and married a much younger wife in the hope that she will be too innocent to cross him. In fact, Lady Teazle spends her time with Lady Sneerwell and the worst set of scandalmongers in town, who have a beady eye on Charles Surface, the reckless young libertine, in expectation of seeing him ruined. Charles, however, turns out to possess the sterling virtues of generosity and loyalty to friends and family; and it is his hypocritical brother Joseph who ends up the villain of the piece. This edition discusses Sheridan's earlier drafts for the play and sets it into its theatrical context of anti-sentimentalism and its social context of the London High Society in which Sheridan had begun to move.

It attests to Farquhar's stature as a man that he composed this
warm-hearted and vibrant play while he was dying. Like The Recruiting
Officer, the play is set in a provincial town and its plot is slight:
Aimwell and Archer, two impecunious London gentlemen, arrive in
Lichfield looking for an heiress to marry. Aimwell, posing as his elder
brother, falls in love with his 'prey' Dorinda and confesses his
imposture to her; his 'man-servant' Archer arouses the wistful interest
of the unhappily married Mrs Sullen. The introduction to this edition
discusses the play for its theatrical merits and argues that it
dramatises the ills of marriage in early modern England, shown by
Farquhar to be more injurious to the wife than to the husband, and
calls for a reform of the divorce laws.