The Beggar's Opera

The purpose of this research is to examine John Gay's The Beggar's Opera as an exercise in themes of social criticism and as a dramatic form that constitutes a comic parody of tragedy. The plan of the research will be to establish the general plot line of the play, and then to cite and discuss criticism of the work that illustrates the themes of social criticism and the elements of form that facilitate the presentation of those themes.

The plot of The Beggar's Opera is simple on the surface, yet riddled with a subtext of complexity. The surface plot concerns the plight of the highwayman Macheath, the erstwhile lover of Lucy Lockit, who has just married Polly Peachum, daughter of London's chief fence and police informer. To claim the reward for Macheath's capture and to claim his estate, old Peachum and Mrs. Peachum conspire with old Lockit, the keeper of Newgate Prison, to have Macheath arrested and jailed. Though jealous of Polly as a rival, Lucy helps Macheath, who promises her marriage, escape from Newgate. When he is recaptured (at his favorite brothel), he is scheduled to be hanged. Lucy and Polly plead in vain for Peachum and Lockit to release Macheath, who in turn pleads with members of his gang to see that the old conspirators are themselves hanged. All is saved when the common folk, or "rabble," demand a reprieve; beggars as much as rich men are after all entitled to such vices as keeping one or more mistresses (Macheath), cheating one's colleagues in bu

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ptain Macheath's character, is equally apt in suggesting that the gentry's priorities are skewed: "What business hath he to keep company with lords and gentlemen? he should leave them to prey upon one another" (I.iv). But the chief mechanism of Gay's commentary is to turn the entire moral universe on its head, by creating a parallel social and moral universe in the world of the beggars on one hand, and on the other by making those within that universe enact its absurd morality. Mrs. Peachum's justcited comment about Macheath implies the former aspect of Gay's enterprise, inasmuch as she believes Macheath ought to remain within his proper universe and not as it were go slumming with mainstreamsociety's best and brightest. The latter aspect as the controlling structural mechanism of the play, is touched upon by Abel in a comment on Brecht's adaptation of Gay's play, but the comment is equally valid for the original: "In Threepenny Opera . . . this farcical and boisterous extravaganza, moral experience is ridiculed and all positive values are buried. . . . [A]ll moral valuescourage, loyalty, honesty, and charityare swept away to a music that is overwhelming" (Abel 8990). A similar point is made specifically with refere

Category: Literature - T