THE BEGGAR’S

OPERA
BY JOHN GAY
THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

• The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera in three acts by John Gay, performed at Lincoln’s Inn
Fields Theatre, London, in 1728 and published in the same year. The work
combines comedy and political satire in prose interspersed with songs set to contemporary
and traditional English, Irish, Scottish, and French tunes. In it, Gay portrays the lives of a
group of thieves and prostitutes in 18th-century London. The action centres on Peachum, a
fence for stolen goods; Polly, his daughter; and Macheath, a highwayman. Gay caricatures the
government, fashionable society, marriage, and Italian operatic style. Particularly evident are
parallels made between the moral degeneracy of the opera’s protagonists and contemporary
highborn society. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Beggars-Opera)
THE BALLAD OPERA

• The ballad opera was the idea of the writer and dramatist John Gay (1685–1732). He
wrote the play and chose a wide variety of popular tunes for the ballads for which he
provided the words. London audiences were used to evenings of mixed entertainments, in
which tragedies or comedies (sometimes both) had singing, dancing and speciality turns
between their acts. Some plays included interludes of singing and dancing, but a play
with songs throughout, which were also an integral part of the drama, was entirely new.
(Goff, Moira. “An Introduction to the Beggar’s Opera”)
CONTEXT

• The immediate context for Gay’s ‘opera’ was not only the elite Italian opera given at the
King’s Theatre in the Haymarket but also the competition between the only two theatres
allowed to perform plays, Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Drury Lane. They had to meet
audience demand for novelty. There was avid public interest in the underworld, fostered
by London’s newspapers with their detailed reports of criminal exploits and many
‘biographies’ and ‘memoirs’ of the most notorious lawbreakers. Beyond these theatrical
and lowlife contexts was the wider political world, dominated at this period by the man
now known as Britain’s first prime minister – Sir Robert Walpole – whose corruption was
an open secret. ((Goff, Moira. “An Introduction to the Beggar’s Opera”)
PLOT
MARRIAGE
• Peachum, a shady character with his feet planted on both sides of the law, determines
who should be sent to the gallows and who should be saved through bribes. His wife, a
prostitute, listens to his litany of crime and debauchery and defends one of her favorite
customers, when news breaks that their daughter Polly has married a notorious robber.
Peachum is displeased with the arrangement since he will lose the services of his
daughter, who is involved in his own dubious business dealings. He soon hatches plans
with his wife about how to profit from the marriage by murdering the newlywed husband
so that Polly can inherit his wealth.
PLOT
CAPTURE
• While the older Peachums are out, looking for Macheath to be killed, the daughter hides her
husband. She then aids his escape but not before demanding assurances that he really loves her
since she is suspicious over his womanizing. Macheath flees to a bar, where he is propositioned
by several women with good manners but bad habits, including stealing and the occasional
robbery. He realizes too late that some of the women are playing on the Peachum team and is
subsequently captured and lead to Newgate Prison, where another of his sweethearts awaits him.
Newgate Prison is operated by Lockit, an associate of Peachum with equal corrupt affinities. His
daughter Lucy, however, is deeply in love with Macheath and claims to have received a marriage
proposal from the robber, when Polly arrives and states she is already married to him.
PLOT
ESCAPE
• When Polly leaves, pulled away by her father, Macheath must use all his powers of
seduction to convince Lucy that he is not married to Polly, and she finally agrees to help
him flee the prison by stealing the keys. Macheath goes straight to a gambling den, where
he is spotted immediately by one of Peachum's lady spies. In the meantime, both Polly's
and Lucy's respective fathers negotiate their share of Macheath's fortune, which is to be
divided once the man is hanged. Peachum's spy arrives and tells them of Macheath's latest
hiding place.
PLOT
RECAPTURE AND THE LIKELIHOOD OF EXECUTION
• When Polly and Lucy meet to settle their disagreement over Macheath, Lucy tries to poison
her rival but fails. News arrives that Macheath has been recaptured, and the girls rush to
prison to plead with their respective fathers for the bandit's life. However, more women arrive
and claim to be married to Macheath. The bandit, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of wives,
is happy to be hanged. As he is lead away, a beggar enters the stage and declares to the
audience that from a moral standpoint Macheath should die, but as audiences have a tendency
to demand happy endings, Macheath has to be acquitted. Macheath returns and declares that
he really was only ever married to Polly and declares his intentions of staying with her.
(Turnbull, Petra. https://penandthepad.com/plot-summary-the-beggars-opera-5343.html)
PUBLICATION, STAGING AND POPULARITY

• The ballad opera was published within little more than a fortnight after the first
performance, with a second edition appearing less than two months after that. Both
included the music for the songs, but it was only the third edition of 1729 that gave these
and the overture in full. As well as the ballads to well-known tunes throughout the
action, The Beggar’s Opera included a number of dances which rapidly became a
favourite feature of productions.
TARGETS OF SATIRE

• The most immediate and obvious target of Gay’s satire was Italian opera. This had been introduced to London in the first
decade of the 18th century and had quickly become the touchstone for elite culture. It was exorbitantly expensive and, to
most English ears, incomprehensible as well as absurd. In the opening scene of The Beggar’s Opera, the Beggar pleads ‘I
hope I may be forgiven, that I have not made my opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue’.
• Another target of the play was Sir Robert Walpole who had come to power in the wake of the 1720 financial crisis known
as the South Sea Bubble. When George II succeeded George I in 1727, Walpole had clung on with the support of the
queen. Walpole was widely regarded as corrupt (even by the notorious standards of the age) and had many enemies,
notably among the literary establishment. The Beggar’s Opera was quickly seen as an attack on Walpole; although he is
not directly represented, – Peachum, Lockit and Macheath all have facets of his character. Walpole responded by
suppressing Polly, Gay’s sequel to The Beggar’s Opera intended for performance the following season.
Nevertheless, Polly was published in 1729 and became a best-seller, even though there was no performance of this new
ballad opera until 1777.
THEMES
EQUALITY

• Gay's exploration of equality has an inherent irony to it, and understanding this irony is
essential to appreciating the sharpness of his satire. Both explicitly through dialogue and
implicitly through the story, Gay critiques the outright inequality between the rich and poor.
However, what makes the work unique is that he makes incessant comparisons between the
powerful rich and the desperate poor. His basic idea is that
• despite social class, all men are naturally self-interested and corrupt. The text is rife with
humorous equivalencies drawn between statesmen and criminals, lawyers and impeachers,
highwaymen and courtiers, all to suggest that inequality is due as much to how hypocritical
a man is willing to be, and not to his virtue.
 MARRIAGE

• In the world of The Beggar’s Opera, marriage bears no resemblance to the romantic notion of a holy union between two
soulmates. Instead, Gay continually mocks this notion, suggesting that love is more closely aligned with lust and self-interest
than with selflessness.
• The closest Gay comes to representing the idealized conception is in the profuse professions Polly and Lucy make
for Macheath. However, both women are as focused on physical intimacy as upon a transcendent union. Polly's marriage
ultimately means little to Macheath, and most characters think of it is in terms of its financial benefits, with little thought of her
emotions. The girls’ notion of romantic love, so misplaced upon an obvious cad, renders the romantic ideal ludicrous.
• For the rest of the characters, a woman’s only use for marriage is financial security -resting on the hotly-anticipated death of
the male spouse, from whom she might inherit. Freedom of sexual expression is also put forward as a potential benefit of
marriage, far different again from the romantic notion of monogamy. Once married, a wife’s reputation is vouchsafed by her
husband. She may thus act with impunity, according to her whim. All of these representations were unique in the time period,
and helped to make Gay's work so transgressive.
 FRIENDSHIP

• There are myriad instances of friendship in the opera, although none of them conform to the ideal notion of a selfless
affection for another. Instead, most characters are quick to betray even the most seemingly profound of relationships. As a
virtue, friendship is espoused by: Peachum for Lockit (and vice versa); the highwaymen for each other; the harem of
ladies for one other; Mrs. Peachum for her favorite gang members; and even Lucy for Polly. In each case, though, the
affection proves at best a transitory kind of fidelity, dictated utterly by self-interest. The highwaymen congratulate
themselves on their valiant allegiance and dedication to one another, but in the next moment conspire to “befriend”
unsuspecting victims about the town in order to rob them. Mrs. Peachum inquires after the wellbeing of her favorite gang
members, extolling their virtues, but quickly drops her concern upon discovering that her husband has chosen them for
the current session’s impeachment. For Peachum and Lockit, as for Lucy and Polly, friendship is a self-consciously
insincere tool. Peachum and Lockit are business partners and self-proclaimed friends, yet each man seeks to cheat the
other. Lucy offers a conciliatory glass of cordial to Polly in seeking to forgive the past and forge a future friendship...and
the cordial is poisoned.
THE LAW

• There is no question that the profession receiving the worst review in The Beggar’s
Opera is law enforcement. The officers of the Court are bribable men who regularly
suppress evidence in criminal prosecution for the right price. Quite explicitly, justice is
for sale, and a malleable concept at best. Worst of all are the lawyers, repeatedly invoked
throughout the play as the prime example of those who profit by the vice of others. One
day they protect the unsavory; the next, they prosecute them. It all depends on the price.
If anything serves as an immovable law in The Beggar's Opera, is the natural law of
human selfishness
HYPOCRISY

• Hypocrisy is arguably Gay's most significant target in the opera. Both implicitly and
explicitly, he mocks the way that statesmen reach great heights not through virtue, but
through their hypocrisy. In fact, hypocrisy defines each and every character, action and
employment, suggesting it is an inherent, inescapable human quality.