Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Threepenny Opera, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed, Selfishness, and Corruption
Love and Sex
The Ravages of Capitalism
Theater, Archetypes, and Artifice
Summary
Analysis
In the wardrobe room of The Beggar’s Friend, a group of beggars have gathered. They are hard at work painting boards with inscriptions such as “I gave my eye for my king”—Peachum is hoping to “disorganize the coronation procession” with a public protest of misery. The beggars are excited about the demonstration.
Peachum has a plan to disrupt the coronation in order to point out to the masses how disdainful they are of the poor—a means to the end of making a killing off the wealthy coronation crowds.
Themes
Ginny Jenny and several prostitutes enter, demanding their fee for helping in Macheath’s arrest. Mrs. Peachum refuses to give the women their fees, stating that Macheath has vanished once again. Mrs. Peachum tries to get Filch to push the women out, but when they raise a ruckus, Peachum comes in and asks what’s going on. Ginny Jenny says that for days she’s been tormented over her role in Macheath’s arrest—she’s been losing business because she’s too upset to focus on her clients. This morning, though, after she’d finally managed to cry herself to sleep, a whistle woke her—Macheath was below the window, and asked to come up to her room, lie in her arms, and “forget the wrong [she] had done him.” After absolving Jenny, Macheath went from room to room, forgiving all the other women their parts as well—including one woman called Suky Tawdry.
Even though Macheath has escaped from the Old Bailey, Ginny Jenny and her coworkers still want their fee for their role in his arrest—which they probably see as a monumental achievement, given Macheath’s reputation for evading the law at every turn. Their betrayal of Macheath is just business—they all have to make ends meet. As Ginny Jenny reflects on her morning with Macheath, she confirms that he is the victim of his own insatiable lust—and has again refused to flee, deciding instead to seek the company of a prostitute he likes.
Themes
Peachum urges Filch to go to the police station and tell them that Macheath is with Suky Tawdry. To placate the prostitutes, he offers to pay them, and orders Mrs. Peachum to fix up a pot of tea. Mrs. Peachum, disgruntled, moves to the front of the stage and reprises “The Ballad of Sexual Submissiveness.” Even at the foot of the gallows, she says, Macheath wants to make “woman’s orifice […] his tomb.” She storms out in a huff to make tea.
Mrs. Peachum laments that not only Macheath—but her husband, as well—are drawn in by the allure of other women. She believes that men are completely beholden to their desires—and she may very well be right.
Themes
Peachum tells the prostitutes that they should be grateful to him for creating a business out of manipulating the indifference of the rich. Though the rich create misery, he posits, they can’t bear to see it—it’s only when it’s happening directly in front of them that they even stoop to notice it. As Mrs. Peachum comes back in with teacups, she promises the women they can have their money tomorrow, after the coronation.
Peachum’s belief that the suffering of the poor only matters to the rich when it is hyper-visible will become important later on in this scene as he devises a plan to exploit this sad fact for his own gain.
Themes
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Filch returns to report that there are a large group of policemen on their way to the establishment. Peachum orders the prostitutes and beggars to hide. He tells Mrs. Peachum to ready the orchestra—when he says the word “harmless,” that’s her cue to play music. Everyone hides, and soon, Tiger Brown comes to the door to arrest Peachum. As Brown is about to put Peachum in cuffs, however, the businessman warns Brown that he’d better be careful about arresting innocent men when a “notorious criminal” is allowed to be at large. Peachum explains that Brown is “on the verge of the worst hour of [his] life.”
In this passage, Peachum, like Macheath, almost seems to relish the arrival of the police—he is prepared to make both a physical and ideological stand against them, and clearly has a bargaining chip in his back pocket which he plans to use against the corrupt Brown and his equally-corrupt men.
Themes
Peachum invites the prostitutes to come out of hiding and share some tea with the sheriff. He is a law-abiding citizen, and the law itself, he states is “made for the exploitation of those who do not understanding or […] cannot obey it.” Those who “pick up the crumbs” of such exploitation, must obey the law themselves. Peachum calls for his “troops” of beggars to begin lining the coronation parade route. Brown, however, orders his constables to round up the beggars and arrest them—he tells Peachum that whatever the man is plotting is now foiled. Peachum tells Brown he’s welcome to arrest the harmless beggars.
Peachum has been presented as a man who has few morals or beliefs apart from ensuring his own survival at any cost. In this passage, however, part of his worldview becomes more clear. He sees the law as a corrupt institution designed to corner and pigeonhole those unequipped to full understand it—and he believes that lawmakers and law enforcement should be held to the same standards as the people their professions allow them to so easily exploit.
Themes
Music begins—the orchestra of beggars begins playing “The Song of the Futility of All Human Endeavor.” Peachum sings the song—it is a brief ditty about how foolish plans and aspirations are. Men who try to chase down luck, he says, will end up “cheat[ed]” by life.
Peachum’s grim outlook on life is always underscored by happy little songs—Brecht’s way of creating a dissonance that highlights the artifice of theater and the silliness of opera’s form while reminding his audience that the bleakness of the world awaits them just outside the theater doors.
Themes
Peachum tells Brown that there are no real beggars here—only a few people in costumes to celebrate the coronation. The real poor, Peachum says, have not yet arrived—but when they do arrive in the thousands to stand before Westminster Abbey, Brown will be in trouble. No one, Peachum says, wants to look upon crippled or “mutilated” people—and yet if Brown and his men try to knock them down or scatter them with violence, the police will look terrible. Brown laments that Peachum is blackmailing him—he can’t do anything, and his hands are tied. Peachum warns Brown, essentially, never to mess with the poor.
Peachum has no qualms about profiting off the poor—even when he’s merely using them as a bargaining chip in a negotiation with the police. Peachum knows that no one recognizes the humanity of the truly poor unless they’re made to—and that cops beating away the unwashed masses would create a scene. Peachum has spent his life studying the ways in which people react to the presence of beggars, so that he can profit off of it—and in this scene, his life’s work becomes even more valuable.
Themes
Brown, knowing that he is being blackmailed into arresting Macheath, asks what he can do when the man is nowhere to be found. Ginny Jenny steps forward and states that Macheath is with Suky Tawdry on Oxford Street. Brown orders his men to go arrest Macheath again and bring him once more to the Old Bailey. Peachum warns Brown that he’d better hang Macheath by six the next morning—or else the poor will make a scene at the coronation. As Brown and his constables leave, Peachum excitedly orders his army of beggars to march on the Old Bailey. He reprises “The Song of the Futility of All Human Endeavor” cheerfully before following the beggars out.
Peachum has Brown in a corner. He knows that the police would look terrible if they assaulted a group of the poor at the Queen’s coronation—and that Brown doesn’t want to fall out of favor with the new monarch. By blackmailing him, he’s able to secure Brown’s allegiance—and Macheath’s capture—seemingly once and for all.
Themes
As the curtain drops, Ginny Jenny appears in front of it playing a stringed instrument called a hurdy-gurdy. She sings “The Song of Solomon,” in which she recalls various figures of human history and declares that they were all “better off without.” From King Solomon to Cleopatra to Caesar—all the way up to Bertolt Brecht himself and Macheath, Brecht’s invention—Jenny repeats the refrain “a man is better off without” as she tells the sad stories of how these historic figures were brutalized, bullied, and often made to feel disillusioned or self-loathing in spite of their fame.
This song breaks the fourth wall, exposing the play as artifice—and a vehicle for Brecht’s own political, social, and artistic frustrations. Jenny’s sad song serves a double purpose. It functions as her own lament about the pain and difficulty of surviving in a corrupt system, and its conclusion that people are “better off without” striving for anything reflects Brecht’s frustrations with capitalism, consumerism, and art itself.
Themes
