John Gay, English poet and dramatist, chiefly remembered as the thor of The Beggar’s Opera, a work distguished by good-humoured satire and technil assurance. A member of an ancient but impoverished Devonshire fay, Gay was ted at the ee grammar school Barnstaple. He was
Contents:
JOHN GAY
* john gay barnstaple *
John Gay, (born June 30, 1685, Barnstaple, Devon, Eng. A member of an ancient but impoverished Devonshire fay, Gay was ted at the ee grammar school Barnstaple.
Gay’s journalistic terts are clearly seen a pamphlet, The Prent State of W (1711), a survey of ntemporary perdil publitns. It is such lite probg of the surface of social life that Gay excels. Gay was a member, together wh Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Arbuthnot, of the Scribles Club, a lerary group that aimed to ridicule pedantry.
The iends ntributed to two of Gay’s satiril plays: The What D’ye Call It (1715) and Three Hours After Marriage (1717) most succsful play was The Beggar’s Opera, produced London on Jan. “Hont” John Gay lost most of his money through disastro vtment South Sea stock, but he nohels left £6, 000 when he died.
JOHN GAY SUMMARY
John Gay, (born, June 30, 1685, Barnstaple, Devon, Eng. From an ancient but impoverished Devonshire fay, Gay was apprenticed to a silk mercer London but was released early. Gay was buried Wtmster Abbey.
JOHN GAY’S THE BEGGAR’S OPERA
John Gay belonged to the Scribles Club – a aln of like-md anti-Enlightenment novelists, poets, playwrights and policians who railed agast the vani of morn tellectual life and culture the early 18th century. John Gay was almost certaly fluenced by his close iends Pope and Swift; wh s st of crooks and n artists, The Beggar’s Opera is a satire on the pretensns, self-terts and double standards of 18th century society – and a jolly good romp to boot. Gay drew spiratn for the character of Peachum om the famo real-life crimal, Jonathan Wild, who mastered a gang of thiev and outlaws and then betrayed them one by one to the legal system for pay-outs; over a hundred crimals were hanged based on his evince.
Gay attacks what he se as the double standards of the legal profsn of his day: ‘The lawyers … don’t re that any body should get a clanste livelihood but themselv’. Gay’s bourgeois dience would have nodd agreement when another character, Ben Budge, clar, ‘We are for a jt partn of the world, for every man hath a right to enjoy life’.