University of Virginia Library

---

INTRODUCTION

Baptized at Barnstaple, Devon, on September 16, 1685, during the reign of Charles II, John Gay was orphaned by the age of ten but raised by a kind uncle, who saw to his education at the local grammar school. On reaching adulthood, Gay was apprenticed to a mercer, but he disliked this occupation and found a post, in or near 1712, as secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth. In 1714, with the sponsorship of Jonathan Swift, Gay joined the household of Lord Clarendon, and journeyed with him to the Continent. Gay's friendly and ingratiating character won him many friends, not a few of whom were courtiers who found employment for him, either in their own households, or with the Government, throughout his life. Immediately after losing a small fortune in the South Sea Bubble, Gay was appointed Lottery Commissioner (!!), a post he held nearly to the end of his life. Gay never married, and divided his time among his friends, especially the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry and the members of the Scriblerians, including Swift and Pope.

John Gay produced, apart from The Beggar's Opera, a small body of prose and poetry ranging in quality from brilliant to drab. In 1712 was printed, but never acted, a short topical play, The Mohocks, concerning the exploits of a gang who had named themselves after a warlike Native American tribe:

The point of this slight work, if it has one, seems to be that frolicsome gentlemen, by introducing chaos into society, have only themselves to blame if that chaos leads to their own downfall. The moral concern that drives The Beggar's Opera is found here, along with its sense of play and eye for detail; it is easy to see why the Scriblerians adopted Gay so wholeheartedly so early in his career.

In 1714, his The Shepherd's Week appeared, demonstrating a sustained competence in producing couplets which, in the pastoral tradition, oscillate gently between mockery and a sweet seriousness:

The What-d'ye Call it, a Tragi-Comi-Pastoral-Farce, was briefly staged in 1715. It has relatively little merit, or interest other than that Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot seem to have assisted in the writing of it. Gay's concern here, as it would be in The Beggar's Opera, is the suffering imposed upon the poor by the rich in a corrupt society.

A year later, in humorous tribute to his adopted London, Gay produced Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London. The inconveniences of life amid eighteenth-century urban hurly-burly are sharply chronicled:

In 1724, a rather stilted, if well plotted, tragedy, The Captives, was staged at Drury-Lane. In 1727, Gay brought out a collection of original verse Fables on the model of Aesop. They are good reading, despite their subsequent neglect, but they are overshadowed by the crystalline clarity and fine-honed irony of The Beggar's Opera. Gay, with the encouragement of Swift and Pope, tried to interest Colley Cibber, the manager of the theatre at Drury-Lane, in putting on his new ballad farce, but encountered disdain. It is possible that the experienced Cibber liked the work, but mistrusted its considerable departure from accepted theatrical conventions and potentially dangerous political satire. The Duchess of Queensberry used her influence (and money: she promised to cover costs in the event of a loss) to convince another reluctant manager, John Rich of the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, to take on the piece. Rich had had a mild success recently with a revival of The Merry Wives of Windsor, but had since found very little useful material to bring in the crowds, and was staging a number of unmemorable pantomimes, even playing the part of Harlequin himself (Schultz 11).

James Quin, the company's leading actor, was to have been Macheath, but felt himself a poor singer and uncomfortable with the role, and recommended the more obscure Thomas Walker, who was found backstage humming one of the songs in a lively fashion, and was hired on the spot (Schultz 36-37). Walker was not, in fact, a great singer, but he brought to the role a romantic and aristocratic verve that was a perfect foil for the sweet and idealistic Polly. Miss Lavinia Fenton, a player with the company, who had been earning fifteen shillings a week, was found to be a very able singer for the part of Polly, and was engaged for the part at thirty shillings a week (Schultz 23).

The first performance, on January 29, began, it is said, with some concern on the part of the audience, for the departure from the conventions of the day was considerable. But the sparkling dialogue, witty satire, and ingenious ballads set to well-loved familiar tunes carried their own weight, and we have a report from Pope, as remembered by Joseph Spence:

The success proved overwhelming. The London weekly The Craftsman, on February 3, carried a short notice:

Gay cleared over six hundred pounds, in fact, while Rich was enabled to begin construction on a fine new theatre in Covent-Garden. That year the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields performances ran to sixty-two, all to full houses, an unprecedented achievement. The play was staged in a number of other cities in England while the original London run was still in progress, and spread to Wales and Ireland, and was the first musical comedy produced in New York City. The Beggar's Opera was printed (and pirated) in many editions; the songs were sung everywhere, and prints of Miss Fenton as Polly were sold in all the shops. The actress was mobbed wherever she went, and eventually married a lord, the Duke of Bolton, who had been present on opening night and lost his heart upon first hearing her sing "Oh ponder well! Be not severe."

The Beggar's Opera is a comic farce, poking accurate 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 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.

Peachum, who is both fence and thief-catcher (see note 10, below), sets the tone with his song of self-justification as he sits at his account-book:

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:

is seconded by Mrs. Peachum's:

The parents conclude, however, that the match may make sense, provided the husband can be killed for his money. They depart, intent on this errand, and we find that Polly has hidden her man on the premises. She informs him of his danger, and there follows a touching duet, in spite of its intentional burlesque of popular love scenes:

Macheath's idea of escaping is to repair to a tavern and gather around him a company of women of dubious virtue. These, though they are of the lowest possible class of society, vie with one another in displaying perfect drawing-room manners, although the subject of their conversation is their success in picking pockets and shoplifting. Two of them, to Macheath's great surprise, have contracted with Peachum to capture him, and Macheath finds himself a prisoner in Newgate, the great City prison. Here, it develops, the jailor's daughter, Lucy Lockit, awaits her chance to upbraid Macheath for having promised to marry her, and reneged.

Macheath succeeds in mollifying her, only to have Polly drop in at this inopportune moment, nearly ruining his chances of escape by claiming him for her husband in Lucy's presence. Macheath finds himself forced to pretend that Polly is crazy, and succeeds in forcing her to retreat—but something in the performance fills Lucy with foreboding: "But that Polly runs in my Head strangely." And she sings, affectingly:

There would be, as the Beggar promised, difficulty choosing between the two young women, but for Lucy's capacity for violence and revenge. Macheath notices, and this would be fatal to her cause, were it not lost already:

In spite of her fears, Lucy aids Macheath in his escape. Her father learns of Macheath's promise of marriage to her, and determines to learn from Peachum the status of Polly's possible marriage, for if Macheath is recaptured and hanged, his fortune will be subject to rival claims. Lockit visits Peachum, and they discover, while listening to a long-winded account by Mrs. Trapes, the whereabouts of Macheath. They conclude to go halves in him, and the chase is on. Mrs. Trapes shows the practical presence of mind that characterizes these underworld characters, by not presuming upon Peachum and Lockit's promise of a reward:

Polly, meanwhile, goes to visit Lucy in hopes of working something out, little knowing that Lucy has resolved to poison her. In a fine takeoff on melodramatic murder scenes, Polly narrowly avoids the cup, and Macheath's recapture is revealed. In the scene memorialized by Hogarth, who was present on opening night, The two "wives" plead with their fathers, unavailingly, for Macheath's life. Then, in a moment of inspired burlesque, Macheath finds that his life has become too complex for him:

A scene, reminiscent of the interruptions in The Rehearsal, interposes, in which the Beggar explains that he would have provided a properly moral ending with the hanging of Macheath, "and for the other Personages of the Drama, the Audience is to suppose they were all either hang'd or transported." But the "taste of the town" will not allow this, for the people had not come to see a tragedy, and must have a happy ending. Macheath is brought back, to the general cry of "a Reprieve," and invites all to a dance of celebration, declaring to Polly that he acknowledges his marriage to her as binding.

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:

The commentator drives home his point by taking note of the Beggar's last remark, which is the most important of the play: "That the lower People have their Vices in a Degree as well as the Rich, and are punished for them,—innuendo, that rich People never are" (89). The article was reprinted as A Key To The Beggar's Opera, and widely distributed.

Following the success of the Opera, Gay wrote a sequel in which Polly follows her husband to the West Indies, which though never performed (it was banned by the Lord Chamberlain, presumably for the sharp satire it contained), sold very well in the bookshops. Polly is confusingly plotted and attempts too many things at once, though its songs are not unmemorable:

Gay also wrote, as he was nearing his end, a serious opera, Achilles, which was performed briefly at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and allowed quietly to disappear into deserved obscurity.

To the end, although Gay was financially improvident, his loyal friends, particularly the Duchess of Queensberry, watched over him. He died in London in 1732, at forty-seven years of age. His remains were interred in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, and marked with an inscription which included these lines:

Gay was a serious artist, never more so than when producing satire; but it is fitting for the persona of the Beggar to pronounce his last rites.

---