The Beggar's Opera

(1728)

John Gay

Comic opera set in the sordid London underworld and presented as the work of an impoverished poet (the title's "beggar"). The dashing Macheath, accomplished highwayman and indefatigable lover, has recently married Polly Peachum, whose despicable father makes his living by betraying both sides of the law. Polly rejects her father's suggestion that she betray Macheath for the reward money and his accumulated riches and warns Macheath of her father's intention to do so. Retreating to his underworld haunts, where his fickle ways provoke the revenge of his sluts and slatterns, Macheath promptly lands in Newgate Prison. There Lucy Lockit, the warden's daughter and a former conquest, succumbs once again. After she extracts a promise of marriage from Macheath, she steals the prison key from her sleeping father and presents it to the prisoner. Then, realising that she has been duped and fearing that Polly will now inherit the highwayman's wealth, Lucy is about to poison her rival when Macheath is recaptured by Lockit and Peachum. The girls plead for his release, but when four more "wives" appear, Macheath is hurried to the hangman. Then, at the objections of an actor who claims that operas should end happily, the beggar-poet rewrites the finale: Macheath is pardoned and chooses Polly as his wife.