The Beggar's Opera is a comic farce opera written in 1728 by John Gay to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch, poking fun at the prevailing fashion in Italian opera as well as the social and political climate of the age. It established a new genre, the "ballad opera," of which it remains the only really notable example, though its popularity led to the work of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and eventually Gilbert and Sullivan. Gay cuts the standard five acts to three, and tightly controls the dialogue and plot so that there are delightful surprises in each of the forty-five fast-paced scenes.
Exactly 200 years later, in 1928, Bertolt Brecht (words) and Kurt Weill (music) wrote a musical based on The Beggar's Opera titled The Threepenny Opera.
Peachum, who is both fence and thief-catcher, sets the tone with his song of self-justification as he sits at his account-book:
Synopsis
Mrs. Peachum comes in, and overhearing her husband's blacklisting of unproductive thieves, remonstrates with him over one of them, but easily goes along:
The middle-class criminal complacency of these two is shattered by their discovery that their daughter Polly has secretly married Macheath, the famous highwayman. Peachum's famous objection:
- Do you think your Mother and I should have liv'd comfortably so long together if ever we had been married?
- Can you support the Expence of a Husband, Hussy, in Gaming, Drinking and Whoring? Have you Money enough to carry on the daily Quarrels of Man and Wife about who shall squander most? There are not many Husbands and Wives, who can bear the Charges of plaguing one another in a handsome way.
- MACHEATH. And I would love you all the Day,
- POLLY. Every Night would kiss and play,
- MACHEATH. If with me you'd fondly stray
- POLLY. Over the Hills and far away.
- You base Man you,----how can you look me in the Face after what hath passed between us?---- See here, perfidious Wretch, how I am forc'd to bear about the Load of Infamy you have laid upon me----O Macheath! thou hast robb'd me of my Quiet----to see thee tortur'd would give me Pleasure.
- If love be not his Guide,
- He never will come back!
- LUCY. How happy I am, if you say this from your heart! For I love thee so, that I could sooner bear to see thee hang'd than in the Arms of another.
- MACHEATH. But could'st thou bear to see me hang'd?
- TRAPES. I don't enquire after your Affairs-- --so whatever happens, I wash my hands on't---- It hath always been my Maxim, that one Friend should assist another-- --But if you please----I'll take one of the Scarfs home with me. 'Tis always good to have something in Hand.
- JAILOR. Four Women more, Captain, with a Child apiece! See, here they come.
- MACHEATH. What----four Wives more!----This is too much----Here----tell the Sheriff's Officers I am ready.
The intent of the play is clearly to remind those in high place that corruption at their level leads to corruption and suffering throughout society. As such, it is a highly moral play, in spite of its apparent glamorization of the criminal life. Two weeks after opening night, an article appeared in The Craftsman, the leading Opposition newspaper, ostensibly protesting Gay's work as libelous, but actually assisting him in satirizing the Walpole establishment by very clumsily taking the government's side:
- It will, I know, be said, by these libertine Stage-Players, that the Satire is general; and that it discovers a Consciousness of Guilt for any particular Man to apply it to Himself. But they seem to forget that there are such things as Innuendo's (a never-failing Method of explaining Libels)....Nay the very Title of this Piece and the principal Character, which is that of an Highwayman, sufficiently discover the mischievous Design of it; since by this Character every Body will understand One, who makes it his Business arbitrarily to levy and collect Money on the People for his own Use, and of which he always dreads to give an Account----Is not this squinting with a vengeance, and wounding Persons in Authority through the Sides of a common Malefactor? (in Guerinot & Jilg, 87-88)
External Links
A 1960s psychedelic band named itself after Gay's work.