f the characters, and around which the power of the play is built, is explained by Gassner:
Its hero is a highwayman whose opponent is an informer and a
receiver of stolen goods. There is a truly dadaist inversion
and dissociation of morals in the work. The world it
pictures is that of laissez faire, of social Darwinism
before the time of Darwin, and of all pervading hypocrisy in
public and private relationships and in romantic situations.
At the same time, it is not to be forgotten that Gay's
theatrical tour de force was primarily intended for ironic
entertainment (Gassner 1:848 9).
Clearly what is happening is that the whole of society is being lampooned. One element of social satire that pervades the play is that which imputes to the criminal underclass a kind of decorousness that is traditionally associated only with the aristocracy. Indeed, the criminals consider their ideas of appropriate behavior far superior to those of society, and in truth, Mrs. Peachum's horror at Polly's decision to marry, and not simply be the mistress of, Macheath, includes ideas that might have sounded prudent and cautionary to genteel young Restoration women and that would be familiar if not agreeable to modern feminists and single mothers recently abandoned by the husbands they put through medical school: "I would indulge the girl as far as prudently we can. In anything but marriage! . . . For a husband hath the absolute power over all a wife's secrets but her own. . . . If the wench does not know her own profit, sure she knows her own pleasure better than to make herself a property" (I.iv).
From first to last, The Beggar's Opera is presentational, not representational, theatre; that is, there is no attempt on the part of the playwright to suggest that the situations are sociologically realistic. Rather, Gay frames the entire opera as something of a conceit ...