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
Peachum and Lockit sit at Peachum’s warehouse, going through their accounts of stolen goods from King George II’s coronation. There are brocades and pocketbooks, watches and snuffboxes, and plenty of jewels (which get exported, so have their own separate account book). But it will take a long time to finish writing everything down, so the men decide to leave it for another day and spend today drinking.
Gay both pokes fun at England’s elite by referencing the coronation. After all, they are just as corrupt as Peachum and Lockit, and their wealth is just as ill-begotten. Peachum’s obsessive accounting makes his business look just as legitimate as the joint-stock corporations that enriched the elite. Indeed, he’s deadly serious about maximizing his profits—even if he occasionally takes a whole day off to drink.
Themes
Lockit tells Peachum that both of their daughters are fickle fools, but they can recapture Macheath if Peachum just keeps Polly under control. He sings that men are like stupid birds or fish, whom women can lure to their ruin (Air 45). Peachum points out that Lucy was the one who let Macheath out of Newgate, but Lockit replies that it’s unfair to blame men for their wives and daughters’ mistakes. Then, a servant announces that Mrs. Diana Trapes is visiting, and Peachum and Lockit agree to meet her.
Peachum and Lockit manage to agree on something: love is a sham, and they should lure Macheath back to jail by using their daughters as bait. But in the process of hatching this plan, they seem to get their sexist prejudices confused: they describe both men and women as both fools and predators. Ultimately, they are really pointing out how love gives people power over one another, and that power can be used for evil.
Themes
