The Beggar's Opera by John Gay - Full Text Archive

Contents:

• BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN GAY
• JOHN GAY’S THE BEGGAR’S OPERA
• THE BEGGAR’S OPERA BY JOHN GAY
• THE BEGGAR'S OPERA BY JOHN GAY
• JOHN GAY
• THE BEGGAR’S OPERA BY JOHN GAY
• JOHN GAY’S THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN GAY

The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera three acts by John Gay, performed at Lln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London, 1728 and published the same year.

In , Gay portrays the liv of a group of thiev and prostut 18th-century London.

Gay ritur the ernment, fashnable society, marriage, and Italian operatic style. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill based their ballad opera Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera) on Gay’s work. None of s ial proponents, least of all s thor John Gay, anticipated this legacy.

JOHN GAY’S THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

When and why did Gay wre The Beggar’s Opera?

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA BY JOHN GAY

Gay wrote the The Beggar’s Opera to needle placent high-end nsumers.

THE BEGGAR'S OPERA BY JOHN GAY

Opera seria is the foil to Gay’s work, which like s target featur warrg divas, sie arias, an overture, three acts, a prison scene and a happy endg. But Gay thst the actn of The Beggar’s Opera ep to London’s unrworld. Most importantly, song exists The Beggar’s Opera not to climax affectively but to school listeners social did Gay's characters The Beggar’s Opera e om?

Gay drew his characters om real-life crimals.

Gay took the name of Jenny Diver, who betrays Macheath, om London’s most famo pickpocket.

JOHN GAY

To this Gay add ad homem attacks: Macheath and Peachum were alternately stand-s for First Mister Robert Walpole, whose nickname ‘Great Man’ is also Macheath’s.

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA BY JOHN GAY

Wantg dienc to grasp the ironic lson of each song stantly, Gay fted new words to so-lled ‘mon’ tun – that is, melodi already known to dienc, maly through prt. And Gay based his plot on events taken om the popular is the storyle of The Beggar’s Opera?

The work’s narrator, a Beggar, here terven wh the ex macha of havg the rabble ‘cry reprieve’, by which means Macheath walks spired Gay to wre The Beggar’s Opera? The Beggar’s Opera was thought by s earlit dienc to be wholly origal, but Gay fact borrowed his central ia of ic versn om the édie en vville, the Parisian street theatre which melodi om tragédie en mique were paired wh ribald actn.

While mock stage tragedy had been embraced by London dienc sce the Rtoratn, Gay followed the Parisian mol by parodyg song rather than speech to rail agast the lg class. The difference was that French vville was a speci of media ll’arte which Harlequ, Columbe and other media figur sang durg their antics, while Gay’s personae and actn rived om the grimmt rners of the news. But Gay had a powerful backer: the headstrong 26-year-old Kty Douglas, Duchs of Queensberry, whose salon regularly hosted cultural lumari such as the poet Alexanr Pope, the archect William Kent, the pater Charl Jervas – and John Gay.

JOHN GAY’S THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

Some of the melodi Gay chose are challengg, rivg om airs by Purcell, Hanl and John Eccl. The ia that Gay mostly ployed ‘folk’ tun is a nard almost as old as The Beggar’s Opera self.

Rather, as The Daily Journal noted three days after the premiere, Gay had fed his sre om ‘about 60 of the most celebrated’ – that is, most published – ‘old English and Stch Tun’. Would Gay’s satire take, or would be hissed off the stage? Gay had already isolated key elements of the later formula – real-life story, socially cril standpot, everyday mic and words – but was Fenton’s h, untraed voice, which smote the ear and the heart together, that clched this revolutn taste.