Poet and playwright John Gay was born Devon to an aristocratic though impoverished fay. Unable to afford universy, Gay went to London to…
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JOHN GAY
* john gay playwright *
John Gay, (born June 30, 1685, Barnstaple, Devon, Eng.—died Dec. 4, 1732, London), 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.
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. The Shepherd’s Week (1714) is a seri of mock classil poems pastoral settg; the Fabl (two seri, 1727 and 1738) are brief, octosyllabic illtratns of moral them, often satiril tone.Gay’s poetry was much fluenced by that of Alexanr Pope, who was a ntemporary and close iend.
JOHN GAY
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).His most succsful play was The Beggar’s Opera, produced London on Jan.
(It was eventually produced 1777, when had a morate succs.) His Beggar’s Opera was succsfully transmted to the 20th century by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill as Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera).“Hont” John Gay lost most of his money through disastro vtment South Sea stock, but he nohels left £6,000 when he died. Poet and playwright John Gay was born Devon to an aristocratic though impoverished fay. Unable to afford universy, Gay went to London to apprentice as a draper stead.
By 1714, Gay had started rrpondg wh Alexanr Pope and bee a member of the Scribles Club, a group that clud Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell, and Lord Oxford.