Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Beggar’s Opera, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Moral Corruption and Hypocrisy
Gender, Love, and Marriage
Class, Capitalism, and Inequality
Opera, High Art, and Performance
Summary
Analysis
Alone and distraught, Polly laments her fate. She imagines Macheath going to the gallows as everyone weeps for him. But she realizes that she can still help him escape. Even if she couldn’t see him, this would give her time to change her parents’ mind. So she goes to let him out from her room, where he’s hiding.
Polly’s heartbroken soliloquy sets up the conflict in the next section of the play, as she tries to save Macheath from her parents’ wrath. It also would have given 18th-century operagoers the drama and romance they were expecting. After all, Gay’s opera was so influential in part because he incorporated these high-minded romantic tropes while also mocking them by making the rest of his characters shamelessly corrupt.
Themes
Literary Devices
