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
Lucy and Polly visit Macheath, who tells them to put the past behind them and go look for new husbands in the West Indies. Distressed, Lucy and Polly sing that they wish they could die alongside Macheath, while Macheath shows them his empty liquor bottle and sings that “my Courage is out” (Air 68). Then, the jailor announces that four more women, each with a child, have come to see Macheath. Unwilling to face “four Wives more,” Macheath asks the jailor to take him straight to the gallows, and he exits.
Apparently, no matter how badly Macheath mistreats and betrays Lucy and Polly, they will always keep loving him. Troublingly, with this pattern, Gay seems to endorse Peachum’s idea that love is just a foolish illusion—and one to which women are particularly susceptible. Macheath’s comments about looking for a new husband foreshadow this play's sequel, Polly, in which Macheath and Polly actually do go to the West Indies together. And the “four Wives more” just add comical insult to injury. Macheath’s willingness to die rather than meet them (and face the consequences of his actions) shows how cowardly and immoral he truly is.
Themes
