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The original idea of the opera came from Jonathan Swift, who wrote to Alexander Pope on August 30, 1716 asking "...what think you, of a Newgate pastoral among the thieves and whores there?" Their friend, Gay, decided that it would be a comedy rather than a pastoral. It became his greatest success.
Exactly 200 years later, in 1928, Bertolt Brecht (words) and Kurt Weill (music) wrote a musical based on The Beggar's Opera titled The Threepenny OperaThe Threepenny Opera Die Dreigroschenoper was a revolutionary piece of musical theatre written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with the composer Kurt Weill in 1928. It directly challenges the audience by breaching the " fourth wall.
Peachum, who is both fence and thief-catcher, sets the tone with his song of self-justification as he sits at his account-book. This dark tune is the only song that appears in both The Beggar's Opera and The Threepenny Opera:
Mrs. Peachum comes in, and overhearing her husband's blacklisting of unproductive thieves, remonstrates with him over one of them, but easily goes along:
The middle-class criminal complacency of these two is shattered by their discovery that their daughter Polly has secretly married Macheath, the famous highwaymanHighwayman was a term used particularly in Britain during the 17th and 18th centuries to describe criminals who robbed people travelling by stagecoach and other modes of transport along public highways. Such outlaws would use or threaten violence in order. Peachum's famous objection:
is seconded by Mrs. Peachum's:
The parents conclude, however, that the match may make sense, provided the husband can be killed for his money. They depart, intent on this errand, and we find that Polly has hidden her man on the premises. She informs him of his danger, and there follows a touching duet, in spite of its intentional burlesque of popular love scenes:
Macheath's idea of escaping is to repair to a tavern and gather around him a company of women of dubious virtue. These, though they are of the lowest possible class of society, vie with one another in displaying perfect drawing- room manners, although the subject of their conversation is their success in picking pockets and shoplifting. Two of them, to Macheath's great surprise, have contracted with Peachum to capture him, and Macheath finds himself a prisoner in Newgate, the great City prison. Here, it develops, the jailor's daughter, Lucy Lockit, awaits her chance to upbraid Macheath for having promised to marry her, and reneged.
Macheath succeeds in mollifying her, only to have Polly drop in at this inopportune moment, nearly ruining his chances of escape by claiming him for her husband in Lucy's presence. Macheath finds himself forced to pretend that Polly is crazy, and succeeds in forcing her to retreat--but something in the performance fills Lucy with foreboding: "But that Polly runs in my Head strangely." And she sings, affectingly:
There would be, as the Beggar promised, difficulty choosing between the two young women, but for Lucy's capacity for violence and revenge. Macheath notices, and this would be fatal to her cause, were it not lost already:
In spite of her fears, Lucy aids Macheath in his escape. Her father learns of Macheath's promise of marriage to her, and determines to learn from Peachum the status of Polly's possible marriage, for if Macheath is recaptured and hanged, his fortune will be subject to rival claims. Lockit visits Peachum, and they discover, while listening to a long-winded account by Mrs. Trapes, the whereabouts of Macheath. They conclude to go halves in him, and the chase is on. Mrs. Trapes shows the practical presence of mind that characterizes these underworld characters, by not presuming upon Peachum and Lockit's promise of a reward:
Polly, meanwhile, goes to visit Lucy in hopes of working something out, little knowing that Lucy has resolved to poison her. In a fine takeoff on melodramaA melodrama in the broadest sense, is a serious drama that can be distinguished from tragedy by the fact that it is open to having a happy ending. In practice, it is a rather pejorative term. In melodrama there is constructed a world of heightened emotiontic murder scenes, Polly narrowly avoids the cup, and Macheath's recapture is revealed. In the scene memorialized by William HogarthWilliam Hogarth ( November 10, 1697 October 26, 1764) was a major British painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited as a pioneer in western sequential art. His work ranged from excellent realistic portraiture to, who was present on opening night, The two "wives" plead with their fathers, unavailingly, for Macheath's life. Then, in a moment of inspired burlesque, Macheath finds that his life has become too complex for him:
A scene, reminiscent of the interruptions in The Rehearsal, interposes, in which the Beggar explains that he would have provided a properly moral ending with the hanging of Macheath, "and for the other Personages of the Drama, the Audience is to suppose they were all either hang'd or transported." But the "taste of the town" will not allow this, for the people had not come to see a tragedy, and must have a happy ending. Macheath is brought back, to the general cry of "a Reprieve," and invites all to a dance of celebration, declaring to Polly that he acknowledges his marriage to her as binding.
The intent of the play is clearly to remind those in high place that corruption at their level leads to corruption and suffering throughout society. As such, it is a highly moral play, in spite of its apparent glamorization of the criminal life. Two weeks after opening night, an article appeared in The Craftsman, the leading Opposition newspaper, ostensibly protesting Gay's work as libelous, but actually assisting him in satirizing the WalpoleRobert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford ( 26 August 1676 18 March 1745), normally known as Sir Robert Walpole is generally regarded as the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. The position of Prime Minister was only a de facto one, having no official recogni establishment by very clumsily taking the government's side:
The commentator drives home his point by taking note of the Beggar's last remark, which is the most important of the play: "That the lower People have their Vices in a Degree as well as the Rich, and are punished for them,----innuendo, that rich People never are" (89).