Operatic Moments (the "prompt")

Choose a moment in the Opera that particularly intrigues and perhaps partly puzzles you (“sketch” it in a sentence or two using summary, quotation, and page numbers). How do you think it worked for/on its original audience—and why did it work this way?

The moment I found particularly intriguing was the introduction, overture, and the first few lines of act 1 scene 1. The Beggar’s Opera opens with the Beggar and a player on the stage. The player comments, “We push his play as far as it will go” (The Beggar’s Opera. intro. 10). However, the Beggar mentions later on that because this work has “neither prologue nor epilogue, it must be allowed an opera in all its form” (The Beggar’s Opera. Intro. 22-24). After an overture, Peachum begins with a song. However, he immediately begins with spoken dialogue. (The Beggar’s Opera. 1.1. 1-12). I wonder if the entire work would be written in song, much like an opera or spoken like a play.
Given the words play and an opera, the use of an overture, sung and spoken dialogue, I might assume that this same question was present in the minds of the original audience. The Beggar calls his work an opera. However, if an opera in the 1700s was anything like our modern opera, then Gay’s work would not be considered an opera “in all its forms” since the actors speak some of the dialogue (The Beggar’s Opera. Intro. 24). Gay incorporates elements of the theatre and plays as well as operas. Since this was performed in a theatre, many audience members would expect a play in its traditional format. However, the title suggests it is an opera. Regardless of whether or not this is a play or an opera, it was successful during its time. It is an opera-play hybrid, which may be why it worked for the audience and became successful. It appealed to a larger audience. It satisfied the people who came to see a play, and those who wanted an opera. However, The Beggar’s Opera did more than that; it made opera accessible to everyone by having it entirely in English. It started something new, but also contained elements found among the traditions of plays and operas. In fact, after reading the Beggar’s Opera, it closely resembles our modern-day musical.
Works Cited:
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Ed. Vivien Jones and David Lindley. London: New Mermaids, 2010. Print.

I am intrigued and partly puzzled by Mrs. Peachum’s lines from Act 1, scene six, “Those cursed playbooks she reads have been her ruin. One word more, hussy, and I shall knock your brains out, if you have any” (The Beggar’s Opera p. 33). This line is particularly puzzling, insofar as it could be interpreted as sly and witty ridicule towards the female audience members for subjecting themselves to , as the “moralists” of the time suggested, the “dangerous effect on the social and romantic aspirations of young women” (Footnote, p. 33). On the other hand, the introduction notes in the New Mermaids edition explain, “The relationship between actors and audience was, then, potentially a close one” (The Beggar’s Opera. p. xxiv) which supports an alternative interpretation for Mrs. Peachum’s lines where the play’s mischievous and satirist tones offer a more playful interplay between the actors and the audience where they are all given the opportunity to mock these moralists’ attitudes towards womens’ interactions with romances and plays.


Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Ed. Vivien Jones and David Lindley. London: New Mermaids, 2010. Print.


(I know I'm not in groups 1 or 2, but I wanted to write about these lines because I wasn't sure what was really being implied, here.)

1.10 - 1.11

In these scenes Peachum and Mrs. Peachum try to convince Polly (using classic parental guilt trips) that it is in her best interest to turn her new husband, Macheath, in to the authorities (this is, after all, the business of her father) so that she can, upon his hanging, inherit his possessions. Mr. and Mrs. Peachum claim that this is the only good outcome of their daughter’s foolish mistakes: 1. marrying a highwayman & 2. marrying for love. Given the fact that the audience is very familiar with the criminals behind the characters, this could have only stoked their interest. The audience surely must have believed the scene--believed that what was happening was not far from the truth of real life; no doubt a very sexy thing to watch--the inside, hidden life of a real criminal. In this moment, in particular, the audience is seeing the lowest of the low...a conspiracy for murder; the Peachums are asking their own daughter to commit murder for their personal gain (and purportedly her own) all the while putting her life and livelihood on the line. The audience easily could have imagined that these criminals were this horrible. I imagine them holding their breath through the scene until the Peachums dismiss Polly with “Away, hussy! Hang your husband and be dutiful!” (1.10.62), allowing the spectators to release their anticipation in a gasp. The whole play, in a broader sense, sheds light on the lives of criminals--something that to this day intrigues us and keeps us watching. Furthermore, these criminals were not your common, everyday variety. These were celebrities. Given the burgeoning interest in celebrity at the time, I believe that the audience was enraptured with being able to get a behind the scenes peek into the lives of these high profile criminals--and here, at the height of their devilishness.

~D.Jester

The section of the play that intrigues me most as a reader and as a reader considering the reactions of the original audience to the play is Act I, Scene vii, in which Polly appears on stage for the first time, discussing her “toying and trifling” (I.vii.18) with her father. Although it was her lamentations in the Act I Scene x air “O Ponder Well” that apparently captivated the crowd on opening night, I feel Polly’s first appearance on stage would have been a major focus for each performance after opening night. I remember going to see the Baz Luhrmann directed modern version of Romeo and Juliet, and when Leonardo Di Caprio appeared on screen for the first time, staring listfully off into the distance, there was an audible hum of excitement from the theatre, mostly from the female contingent I am sure. I wonder if this kind of reaction might have occurred on some level for Lavinia Fenton as Polly as her fame began to materialize.

The scene itself is beautifully juxtaposed with dynamic of the previous scene, in which Mrs. Peachum dotes over Filch, even declaring “I am as fond of this child, as though my mind misgave he were my own” (I.vi.11-12). In Mrs. Peachum there is a mother/son dynamic, and she praises his thrift in stealing a wide range of items, including a failed attempt to snatch a gold watch. Polly’s first appearance is with her father, echoing and inverting the previous scene, and she describes the many “trifling liberties” bestowed on her by Macheath as he courts her, the first of which is...a watch! Although the male thief is unsuccessful and must make a getaway, Polly attains a myriad of material things simply by being charming and beautiful, garnering her the respect of the ever-business-conscious Peachum. A whole host of ironies and inversions pervade the scene, establishing the dominant motifs of the play, including her father’s warning not to play the fool and get married.

The song that Polly sings is an ironic twist on a traditional love song but she ponders the fleeting nature of a woman’s beauty, and, even, of her virginity. When reading this, I was struck by the similarity to Orsino’s words of wisdom to Viola/Cesario in Act II of 12th Night. Orsino declares that men should marry women younger than them and remarks that “women are as roses, who’s fair flower/ Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour” (II.iv.38-39). I wonder if the audience would have made this connection, or if indeed this was what Gay intended. It seems to work with the motif of inversion and reversal so prominent in the play.

I am most intrigued in exploring the interplay between the text and the music of The Beggar’s Opera. As we began discussing at the end of class on Thursday, and as is emphasized in the background reading, the opera works on a number of levels to create a sense of both familiarity and confusion for the reader, leading to destabilization (Stuart’s term) and reconsideration. The audience experiences these effects in the introduction, in which the Beggar indicates that he has “consented to have neither prologue nor epilogue” (Gay 6) in a speech that could ostensibly be considered a prologue: it introduces some of the play’s topics, concludes with the introduction of the actors, and segues into a lengthy overture.

Gay creates these effects in a number of ways. Vivien Jones and David Lindley argue that “the complexity of response has much to do with Gay’s readiness to borrow from non-classical and popular cultural genres,” specifically “traditional song tunes…, early eighteenth-century comedy…, and … popular criminal narratives” (xii). I am particularly interested in the way in which Gay’s rewriting the traditional lyrics while retaining the original melodies impacted the audience. In many instances, the new lyrics contrast those of the original, and while the members of the audience no doubt reacted to the new lyrics, those in attendance must also have been impacted by their memories, and all the resulting associations, of the familiar tunes. Indeed, it would have been impossible for the theatergoers to escape “the often ironic play of Gay’s new lyrics against the original words that the auditors already had in their heads…” (Sherman 3).

Examples of these revisions of both text and meaning abound in Act I, from Air 4, in which Mrs. Peachum changes the sex of the poem’s subject to comment on the social impact of unwed sexual dalliances, to Air 16, which the text notes is “a tune with a number potential resonances for the original audiences” (Gay 37, fn. 30). Air 6, however, provides perhaps the most illustrative example we have encountered. As the text notes, the original is “a song of adoring love” (Gay 21, fn. 9), in which the speaker celebrates the ends to which he will go to express his love, outdoing all other suitors by sacrificing himself. This sacrifice leads the speaker to great joy, as “In fair Aurelia’s arms” he will be “embalmed with the sweets of her breath” (Sherman 14). In Gay’s revision, however, while the end of the process of love is the same—death—its impact is not cathartic, but rather destructive, as the “flower… fades, and shrinks, and… /Rots, stinks, and dies” (Gay 20).

I am still working through this argument, and I’d welcome people’s ideas about the relationship between the songs, the text, and its meaning. At this point, I would argue that the rewriting of these familiar tunes is one of the many elements that Gay uses to create an unreliable foundation for the viewer, and to create an experience—through the songs—that is simultaneously captivating in its familiarity and destabilizing in its revision.

Sources:
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Ed. Vivien Jones and David Lindley. London: New Mermaids,
2010. Print.

Sherman, Stuart. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration and the
Eighteenth Century. 3rd ed. New York: Longman, 2006. Print.

“MARRIED!” wails Peachum, sweet Polly’s father upon hearing of his daughter’s actions. Mrs. Peachum has tickled the truth out of her favorite, Filch, and has just informed Peachum. He asks “Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long together, if ever we had been married?” (1.8.12-15) However it is still rumor and he hopes for the chance she is “only upon liking” (1.8.37) or having an affair. Her response is Air 8 where after kissing and intimacy with Macheath she sings “So I thought it both safest and best, To marry, for fear you should chide” (1.8.49-50). The scene reaches its peak when Polly declares “I did not marry him(as ‘tis the fashion) coolly and deliberately for honour or money. But, I love him”(1.8.56-57) and her mother responds “Love him! Worse and worse! I thought the girl had been better bred” (1.8.58-59).

The contrast of Polly’s sweet honour, presented in affecting innocence next to the rapacious morals of her mother and father had to have been found hysterically funny by early 18th century audiences. All the recognizable elements of the “daughter gone wrong” story are there—the rumor of marriage, parents wailing and gnashing of teeth, the confrontation, the confession, then “the where did we go wrong” rant but are turned on their head. Polly hasn’t done wrong—and rather than “sin” by a dalliance, she follows her heart and does what would have been considered the “right” thing. The Peachums wail because she followed the rules and her heart and their rant could more appropriately be summed up as “Where did we go right?” The woe they express at her lack of breeding is a wonderful twist, ironically playing with traditional values. In fact it is despite her breeding that she is “pure.” Therefore, what makes this scene work is Polly’s genuineness. When she says simply but with complete honesty, “But I love him,” hearts all over the audience would have melted. Her sincerity is essential to pull the audience in and creates the dramatic tension. If the actress plays Polly in any way as false, the contrast dissolves, she becomes just like Mom and Dad and the scene doesn’t work.


Works Cited:
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Ed. Vivien Jones and David Lindley. London: New Mermaids, 2010. Print.

I preempt this post by saying that, outside of Shakespeare, I have no experience whatsoever with the theater of this era. And my knowledge of comedies and the rules they follow are limited at best.


My point of interest begins in Act One, Scene Five, where Polly's mother says, 'Why must our Polly...differ from her sex, and love only her husband? And why must Polly's marriage...make her the less followed by other men?'

I thought the rule of the day, especially in the elevated aristocracies, was the ideal marriage being a true romance/love that is projected throughout the ages, regardless of obstacle, blah blah blah. Also, the role of a 'good' woman would be to love her husband and be faithful to him. Is this my own misunderstanding of the era? Or is this one of the juxtapositions of 'The Beggar's Opera' that we were to keep an eye out for?

To me, the whole scene is hilarious. The fact that Mr. and Mrs. Peachum both rally against their daughter and are scandalized by the fact that she has in fact, married a captain and intends to remain faithful to him alone. It seems to me that, as low as the Peachums seem to be on the totem pole, any marriage their daughter captured would push them up a rung or two.

Is Gay farcing the typical operas of the day? Or not?

p.s. I really hope this is supposed to be a comedy, because I'm laughing. A lot.

In Polly’s first entrance Gay has her singing, “What shall I Do to Show how Much I Love Her.” In comparing virgins to flowers, she sings, “but when once plucked, ‘tis no longer alluring,/To Covent Garden ‘tis sent (as yet sweet),/ There fades, and shrinks, and grows past all enduring, / Rots, stinks, and dies, and is trod under feet,” (Act I, scene vii, lines 14-17). Once a flower is picked it is sent to the flower market, where its beauty fades and without its allure, it is dropped and forgotten, to be walked and trampled over. Covent Gardens was also a locale for prostitution. The implication is that Polly is no longer a virgin, and Macheath will indeed lose his sense of interest in her. As she has nothing else to offer him, he will discard her in his search for another.
The play is centralized around survival. Macheath, is constantly sought after and Peachum and Lockitt are dealing daily with accounts of prisoners who are literally trapped, and imprisoned. But Polly is not to be forgotten, because it is not her physical survival that promotes an impending doom, but rather it is her emotional survival that would have plagued the audience. This is the first instance where Polly is able to speak for herself, displaying her victimization. It openly demonstrates the sexual double standard of the time: the flirtatious, promiscuous man, and the ruined, and used woman. While it is not Polly’s life that is in danger, it is her emotional state that stands to be crushed. It is here that romance is exposed, which the audience would have lapped up. The same ideal is still prominent today: every girl loves a bad boy, and in capturing his attentions, hopes that she is the key, and that her love alone, will change him. That he will change for her. Poor Polly.

Works Cited:
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Ed. Vivien Jones and David Lindley. London: New Mermaids, 2010. Print.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dael4sb42nI

"Would ye have a young virgin?" put me in mind of this song by the late, great Otis Redding.