The Beggar’s Opera

The Beggar’s Opera

by

John Gay

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Opera, High Art, and Performance Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Moral Corruption and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
Gender, Love, and Marriage Theme Icon
Class, Capitalism, and Inequality Theme Icon
Opera, High Art, and Performance Theme Icon
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.
Opera, High Art, and Performance Theme Icon

The Beggar’s Opera is in large part a response to Italian operas, which were popular in early 18th-century London. John Gay decided to write a new opera for the masses, which would both build on the Italian operas’ popularity and satirize their elitist conventions. When most operas focused on royalty or characters from mythology, Gay chose to write about thieves and sex workers from London’s lower classes—the kind of folklore antiheroes whom theatergoers would have instantly recognized from popular literature. And while most operas were written around carefully arranged classical music designed to show off singers’ technical abilities, The Beggar’s Opera featured popular folk songs (and a few well-known arias from other operas) with new, often ironic lyrics. Thanks to this innovative approach, The Beggar’s Opera transformed theater forever: it was the most popular play of the 18th century and arguably the first musical.

Like the music, the humor in The Beggar’s Opera relies on mixing opera’s “high culture” with the “low culture” of the play’s setting. This is already clear from the play’s opening moments, in which a Beggar rushes onstage and thanks a Player (theater director) for putting on his opera as a form of charity. Later, just before the play’s last scene—in which Macheath is supposed to be executed—the Beggar and Player come back onstage. The Player demands a happy ending “to comply with the Taste of the Town,” and the Beggar obliges. Instead of dying, Macheath survives and the play ends with a joyful song and dance. The Beggar’s interventions allow Gay to simultaneously namecheck Italian opera and distance himself from it. In this way, Gay ensured that his opera was accessible and exciting to London theatergoers but also poked fun at them for so often paying money they couldn’t afford to watch plays they didn’t understand in a language they didn’t speak.

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Opera, High Art, and Performance Quotes in The Beggar’s Opera

Below you will find the important quotes in The Beggar’s Opera related to the theme of Opera, High Art, and Performance.
Introduction Quotes

If Poverty be a Title to Poetry, I am sure No-body can dispute mine. I own myself of the Company of Beggars; and I make one at their Weekly Festivals at St. Giles’s.

Related Characters: The Beggar (speaker), The Player
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Scene 3 Quotes

Robin of Bagshot, alias Gorgon, alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob Booty.

Related Characters: Peachum (speaker), Robin of Bagshot (“Bob Booty”)
Related Symbols: Account Book
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Scene 13 Quotes

[Parting, and looking back at each other with fondness; he at one Door, she at the other.]

MACHEATH. The Miser thus a Shilling sees,
Which he’s oblig’d to pay,
With Sighs resigns it by degrees,
And fears ’tis gone for aye.

POLLY. The Boy, thus, when his Sparrow’s flown,
The Bird in Silence eyes;
But soon as out of Sight ’tis gone,
Whines, whimpers, sobs and cries.

Related Characters: Polly Peachum (speaker), Macheath (speaker)
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 4 Quotes

Before the Barn-door crowing,
The Cock by Hens attended,
His Eyes around him throwing,
Stands for a while suspended.
Then One he singles from the Crew,
And cheers the happy Hen;
With how do you do, and how do you do,
And how do you do again.

Related Characters: Jenny Diver (speaker), Macheath, Molly Brazen, Mrs. Coaxer, Betty Doxy, Mrs. Slammekin, Suky Tawdry, Dolly Trull, Mrs. Vixen
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 9 Quotes

How cruel are the Traytors,
Who lye and swear in jest,
To cheat unguarded Creatures
Of Virtue, Fame, and Rest!
Whoever steals a Shilling,
Through Shame the Guilt conceals:
In Love the perjur’d Villain
With Boasts the Theft reveals.

Related Characters: Lucy Lockit (speaker), Polly Peachum, Macheath
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 13 Quotes

Where is my dear Husband?—Was a Rope ever intended for this Neck!—O let me throw my Arms about it, and throttle thee with Love!—Why dost thou turn away from me?—’Tis thy Polly—’Tis thy Wife.

Related Characters: Polly Peachum (speaker), Lucy Lockit, Macheath
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

Be pacified, my dear Lucy—This is all a Fetch of Polly’s, to make me desperate with you in case I get off. If I am hang’d, she would fain have the Credit of being thought my Widow—Really, Polly, this is no time for a Dispute of this sort; for whenever you are talking of Marriage, I am thinking of Hanging.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker), Polly Peachum, Lucy Lockit
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 15 Quotes

MACHEATH. I am naturally compassionate, Wife; so that I could not use the Wench as she deserv’d; which made you at first suspect there was something in what she said.

LUCY. Indeed, my Dear, I was strangely puzzled.

MACHEATH. If that had been the Case, her Father would never have brought me into this Circumstance—No, Lucy,—I had rather dye than be false to thee.

LUCY. How happy am I, if you say this from your Heart! For I love thee so, that I could sooner bear to see thee hang’d than in the Arms of another.

Related Characters: Lucy Lockit (speaker), Macheath (speaker), Polly Peachum
Page Number: 46-47
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 1 Quotes

Love, Sir, is a Misfortune that may happen to the most discreet Woman, and in Love we are all Fools alike.—Notwithstanding all he swore, I am now fully convinc’d that Polly Peachum is actually his Wife.—Did I let him escape, (Fool that I was!) to go to her?—Polly will wheedle herself into his Money, and then Peachum will hang him, and cheat us both.

Related Characters: Lucy Lockit (speaker), Polly Peachum, Lockit, Macheath
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 4 Quotes

We, Gentlemen, have still Honour enough to break through the Corruptions of the World.—And while I can serve you, you may command me.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker), Ben Budge, Matt of the Mint
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 7 Quotes

I’m like a Skiff on the Ocean tost,
Now high, now low, with each Billow born,
With her Rudder broke, and her Anchor lost,
Deserted and all forlorn.
While thus I lye rolling and tossing all Night,
That Polly lyes sporting on Seas of Delight!
Revenge, Revenge, Revenge,
Shall appease my restless Sprite.

Related Characters: Lucy Lockit (speaker), Polly Peachum, Macheath
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 15 Quotes

POLLY. How can I support this Sight!
LUCY. There is nothing moves one so much as a great Man in Distress.

AIR 68. All you that must take a Leap, &c.

LUCY. Would I might be hang’d!

POLLY. –––––––––––––––––––And I would so too!

LUCY. To be hang’d with you.

POLLY. –––––––––––––––––My Dear, with you.

MACHEATH. O Leave me to Thought! I fear! I doubt!
I tremble! I droop!—See, my Courage is out.
[Turns up the empty Bottle.]

POLLY. No token of Love?

MACHEATH. ––––––––––––––See, my Courage is out.

[Turns up the empty Pot.]

LUCY. No token of Love?

POLLY. ––––––––––––––Adieu.

LUCY. –––––––––––––––––––Farewell.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker)
Page Number: 67-68
Explanation and Analysis:

[Enter Women and Children.]
What—four Wives more!—This is too much.—Here—tell the Sheriffs Officers I am ready.
[Exit MACHEATH guarded.]

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker)
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 16 Quotes

PLAYER. But, honest Friend, I hope you don’t intend that Macheath shall be really executed.

BEGGAR. Most certainly, Sir.—To make the Piece perfect, I was for doing strict poetical Justice.—Macheath is to be hang’d; and for the other Personages of the Drama, the Audience must have suppos’d they were all either hang’d or transported.

PLAYER. Why then, Friend, this is a down-right deep Tragedy. The Catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an Opera must end happily.

BEGGAR. Your Objection, Sir, is very just; and is easily remov’d. For you must allow, that in this kind of Drama, ’tis no matter how absurdly things are brought about.—So—you Rabble there—run and cry a Reprieve—let the Prisoner be brought back to his Wives in Triumph.

PLAYER. All this we must do, to comply with the Taste of the Town.

Related Characters: The Beggar (speaker), The Player (speaker), Macheath
Page Number: 68-69
Explanation and Analysis:

BEGGAR. Through the whole Piece you may observe such a similitude of Manners in high and low Life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable Vices) the fine Gentlemen imitate the Gentlemen of the Road, or the Gentlemen of the Road the fine Gentlemen.—Had the Play remain’d, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent Moral. ’Twould have shown that the lower Sort of People have their Vices in a degree as well as the Rich: And that they are punish’d for them.

Related Characters: The Beggar (speaker), Peachum, Macheath
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 17 Quotes

MACHEATH. Thus I stand like the Turk, with his Doxies around;
From all Sides their Glances his Passion confound;
For black, brown, and fair, his Inconstancy burns,
And the different Beauties subdue him by turns:
Each calls forth her Charms, to provoke his Desires:
Though willing to all; with but one he retires.
But think of this Maxim, and put off your Sorrow,
The Wretch of To-day, may be happy To-morrow.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker), Polly Peachum
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis: