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 in prison, Macheath sings that men can escape violence and disease unscathed, but “He that tastes Woman, Ruin meets” (Air 26). He complains that the woman he promised to marry will now blame him for ruining her life. But he admits that his promise to marry her was meaningless. He laments that women use men’s promises “as an Excuse for following their own Inclinations.” Then, he sees Lockit’s daughter Lucy approaching and remarks that he’d rather be deaf than talk to her.
Macheath’s complaints about the woman he promised to marry are a clever plot twist: he appears to be talking about Polly, but he’s actually talking about Lucy. Meanwhile, his attitudes about gender are even more absurd and hypocritical than Peachum’s. He blames women for men’s misbehavior, and he suggests that men should be able to lie and manipulate women, but women have no right to do the same to men. This all shows that Macheath has no concept of morality or justice—like a child, he only wants what is best for himself, and he grows furious when the world doesn’t give it to him.
Themes
