The Beggar's Opera (Regents Restoration Drama Series) - Softcover

John Gay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803253613 ISBN 13: 9780803253612

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1969

Synopsis

The Beggar's Opera introduced to theater the ballad-opera and an immortal cast of characters. The Peachums, employers of a company of pickpockets, shoplifters, and thieves, raised their daughter Polly for finer things, but she has done a dreadful deed. She has married for love. Her husband is Macheath, so exquisite a robber he might have been a lawyer or lord, and so devoted to matrimony that he has two or three wives already.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The great lords and powerful public officials of early eighteenth-century England are represented as highwaymen and thieves in this deliciously satirical ballad opera. In addition to its burlesque of the contemporary vogue for Italian operatic styles, John Gay's 1728 masterpiece ridicules a broad spectrum of political figures and social conventions—marriage, lawyers, trade, and even Walpole, the prime minister.
Depicting crime and vice at every level of society, The Beggar's Opera offers a witty and powerful indictment of greed, hypocrisy, and corruption in all social classes. When Peachum, a receiver of stolen goods, discovers that a notorious highwayman has eloped with his daughter, the wily old villain turns informer and collects the reward money as his prospective son-in-law is hauled off to prison. Events take an increasingly absurd turn as the dashing outlaw romances the jailer's daughter and effects an escape, only to return to the shadow of the gallows for a farcical climax that parodies the sentimental tragedy of the day.

About the Author

John Gay was an English playwright and poet who is most famous for his satirical masterpiece The Beggar s Opera. Originally employed in the government, Gay turned to writing after losing his position following the death of Queen Anne in 1714. From then on, Gay relied on his income from writing, building up a long list of patrons over the course of his career, and making contact with some of the most famous writers of the time, including Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope (and with whom he was a member of the informal society of authors and thinkers known as the Scriblerus Club). After losing the majority of his fortune to a bad investment, Gay eventually found his greatest success in The Beggar s Opera, a ballad opera that satirized society and government, and which ran for sixty-two nights upon its initial release. Gay died on December 4, 1732, at the age of forty-seven, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1969
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803253613
• ISBN 13: 9780803253612
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 238
• Editor: Edgar V. Roberts, Edward Smith