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
The Player and the Beggar enter the scene. The Player says he hopes the play doesn’t actually end with Macheath’s execution, but the Beggar says that it must. In fact, all the other characters should be transported or hanged, too. The Player says that this would make the play a tragedy, but operas are supposed to have happy endings. The Beggar admits that the Player is right and declares that the ending will be easy to change, since “this kind of Drama” always has bizarre plot twists. So instead of being executed, Macheath will reunite with his wives. The Beggar explains that, with its original ending, the play was supposed to show how people from the lower and upper classes misbehave in the same ways—but only the poor get punished for it.
Through this surprise scene, Gay once again returns to metatheater—or a theatrical performance that comments on the very fact that it’s a performance. In particular, he reminds the audience that his play represents England’s unjust political and economic system, and he highlights the way he is both taking from and mocking Italian opera. The Beggar, who represents London’s lower classes, explicitly describes the play’s message about justice: the rich and powerful (like Peachum) don’t pay for their crimes, while the poor (like Macheath) do. While the Beggar wants to end the play by serving justice, however, the Player (who represents the elite) insists on a superficially happy ending. Thus, their conversation plays out the precise kind of injustice that the Beggar is criticizing. Gay also uses this scene to mock the very operatic conventions that the Player insists on following—especially the common trend of ending a play through a deus ex machina (an unlikely plot device that gives a work of art an unexpected, usually happy ending). Thus, the play ends on a deeply ironic note: instead of letting the plot play out and lead to a just conclusion in which everyone gets punished for their crimes, Gay uses a deus ex machina to create an even more unjust conclusion, in which nobody gets punished at all.
Themes
Literary Devices
