Scene I: Lady Sneerwell, a wealthy young widow, and her hireling Snake discuss her various scandal-spreading plots.

One item is the imminent return of the Surface brothers' rich uncle Sir Oliver from the East Indies, where he has been for sixteen years; another is Charles' dire financial situation.

Rowley, the former steward of the Surfaces' late father, arrives, and Sir Peter gives him an earful on the subject.

He also complains that Maria has refused Joseph, whom he calls "a model for the young men of the age," and seems attached to Charles, whom he denounces as a profligate.

Scene I: Rowley describes his plan for Sir Oliver to visit each of the brothers incognito to test their characters.

Sir Peter is left alone and when Maria enters, he tries to convince her to marry Joseph expressing him as a worthier match than Charles, whom she favours.

Scene III: Charles and his raucous guests drink heavily and sing merry songs, as they prepare for a night of gambling.

Charles frankly asks "Premium" for credit, noting that Sir Oliver (whom he believes is in India) will soon leave him a fortune.

Scene II: Sir Oliver, reflecting on Charles's character with Moses, is met by Rowley, who has brought him the hundred pounds sent to "Stanley."

Declaring "I’ll pay his debts, and his benevolence too", Sir Oliver plans to go meet his other nephew in the person of Stanley.

On her entrance, Joseph forswears any interest in Maria, and flirts in earnest with Lady Teazle, perversely suggesting that she should make a "faux pas" for the benefit of her reputation.

Sir Peter confides his intention to give his wife a generous separate maintenance during his life and the bulk of his fortune on his demise.

Joseph "confesses" that he is not as virtuous as he seems: "a little French milliner, a silly rogue that plagues me" is hiding there to preserve her own reputation.

But Joseph tells "Stanley" that Sir Oliver is in fact very stingy, and has given him nothing except trinkets such as tea, shawls, birds and "Indian crackers".

It portrays her as somewhat regretful of leaving country domesticity for London society, and includes an elaborate parody of a famous speech in Shakespeare's Othello.

In its earliest stages, as detailed by Thomas Moore, Sheridan developed two separate play sketches, one initially entitled "The Slanderers" that began with Lady Sneerwell and Spatter (equivalent to Snake in the final version), and the other involving the Teazles.

[1] The play did not appear in an authorised edition during Sheridan's lifetime, though it was printed in Dublin in 1788 from a copy that the author had sent to his sister.

[6] In the Project Gutenberg text's version of I.1, Lady Sneerwell's accomplice is her cousin Miss Verjuice, not the socially inferior Snake (who appears only in V.3).

Madam by this Time Lady Brittle is the Talk of half the Town—and I doubt not in a week the Men will toast her as a Demirep.

He I am informed has a Brother who courts a Milliners' Prentice in Pallmall whose mistress has a first cousin whose sister is Feme [Femme] de Chambre to Mrs. Clackit—so that in the common course of Things it must reach Mrs. Clackit's Ears within four-and-twenty hours and then you know the Business is as good as done.

[14] Many other slight differences of a few words here and there can be found throughout the play[5] (though these do not impact the plot the way that the deletion of Miss Verjuice does).

The scene in which Charles sells all the old family pictures but his uncle's, who is the purchaser in disguise, and that of the discovery of Lady Teazle when the screen falls, are among the happiest and most highly wrought that comedy, in its wide and brilliant range, can boast.

Besides the wit and ingenuity of this play, there is a genial spirit of frankness and generosity about it, that relieves the heart as well as clears the lungs.

On the other hand, the play has also been criticised for some hints of anti-Semitism, specifically "the disparaging remarks made about moneylenders, who were often Jewish.

"[18] It is true that the moneylender Moses is portrayed in a comparatively positive light, but the way he is described (as a "friendly Jew" and an "honest Israelite" by Rowley in III.1) suggest that he is in some way to be considered an exception to Jews in general; also, his own usurious business practices as stated to Sir Peter are clearly less than exemplary (e.g., his statement "If he appears not very anxious for the supply, you should require only forty or fifty per cent; but if you find him in great distress, and want the moneys very bad, you may ask double" [III.1]).

[19] It is notable that at least one 21st-century production (Los Angeles, 2004) has "sanitized most of what could be deemed as anti-Semitic content" by changing references to "Jews" and "Jewry" to "moneylenders"—a practice that a reviewer termed "PC-ification" of the play.

[20] Another production, by the Seattle Shakespeare Company in 2007, reportedly did not tamper with this aspect of the text and was commended by a reviewer for "the courage to face the script's unsavory side.

In appraising a 1999 staging of Sheridan's comedy at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, one critic found the "staunchly orthodox production" to be lacking, commenting that Sheridan's satirical bite, which is as venomous as Molière's and as quick as Wilde's, comes not from epigrammatic flourishes, but from the subtle undermining of Georgian social mores...

In this realm, gossip is a form of social control, wielded by the essentially impotent elite to force conformity among their peers[23] Another reviewer in Variety noted of a 1995 production starring Tony Randall as Sir Peter Teazle that Sheridan's play was "such a superbly crafted laugh machine, and so timeless in delivering delectable comeuppance to a viper's nest of idle-rich gossipmongers, that you'd practically have to club it to death to stifle its amazing pleasures" – before claiming that this is precisely what the production being reviewed had done.

In 1975, WNET/13 New York, in association with KTCA St. Paul-Minneapolis, broadcast a production by the Guthrie Theater Company adapted by Michael Bawtree.