The "prompt"

Write up your take on those slippery final scenes.

When dealing with the final two scenes of The Beggar’s Opera, I cannot help but enjoy the delicious humor within them. First, we have the beggar “forced” to compromise his moralistic ending for the “taste of the town” (114), then we have our hero forced into a fate worse than death- marriage.
For the beggar to change his ending is poetic. After all, isn’t all performance subject to the whims of its audience and its tastes? Thus why we see the exact same movies in the theater every year filling seats at increasingly exorbitant prices. Gay is playing with the contrived endings to Italian operas, yes, but he is also playing with the position of the artist in response to an audience that arrives with expectations and projections.
Even more entertaining is that moment, where Macheath returns, and “must have a wife at last” (115). Of course, he takes out heroine, Polly, for his. However, the other wives and their children do have a claim over Macheath. For our ultimate escape artist, there is a total denial of an escape from this crushing wave of domesticity. Macheath is damned to a life of marital bliss as a result of his insatiable appetite for women, and there is no greater punishment for his crimes.
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Ed. Vivien Jones and David Lindley. London: New Mermaids, 2010. Print.

In act 3, scene 16, the Beggar returns to the stage seemingly to complete the action of the play and to offer the audience some parting words (or explanation) on the spectacle they had just observed. The Beggar confirms that Macheath would indeed hang, along with the other personages in the play. The Beggar claims this outcome to be one of “strict poetical justice” (3.16.4), a statement that contains several layers of understanding within the context of the performance. An outcome is said to be poetically just when good, virtuous characters are rewarded, and bad, vice-plagued characters are punished. The Beggar’s reference to poetic justice is logically correct: Macheath is certainly full of vice, and he is receiving his just end by hanging. However, I would venture to say that there are neither good nor bad characters in The Beggar’s Opera, making the traditional understanding of poetic justice useless.

All of the characters display vice and virtue, and their actions within the plot do not allow the audience to determine decisively whether the characters are meant to be “good” or “bad.” The play is populated exclusively by thieves, prostitutes, and other underworld characters, people generally thought to be full of vice. However, as discussed in class, London’s underworld was found to be fascinating by London’s more well-behaved citizens. Public executions were the best free entertainment around. Much attention and excitement, bordering on admiration, surrounded the captures and escapes of criminals such as Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. In The Beggar’s Opera, just as in real life, the progress of the criminal characters are followed, and their ultimate executions are met with some regret (even if it is simply regret over the loss of a source of genuine entertainment). However, in The Beggar’s Opera, as opposed to a real public execution, the charming thief is saved in the end from the gallows, in order “to comply with the taste of the town” (3.16.14). Macheath is a recipient of poetic justice, as his (half) virtues, namely humor and cunning, save him from execution. Likewise, the audience is the recipient of poetic justice for their continued fascination with the underworld. In real life, criminals are put to death according to the law, despite the dedication of common people to their stories. In The Beggar’s Opera, the criminal escapes death and survives to continue to entertain.

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

The final two scenes of The Beggar’s Opera are, for me, two things: hysterical and utterly brilliant! Gay completely throws his audience through a loop as he stops the seemingly natural progression of events for Macheath’s fate as a convicted criminal and then gives one of the lowest characters in society, a beggar, an ultimate power- the power to not only alter the play’s plot details, but to actually determine another man’s fate! The Beggar states, “Let the prisoner be brought back to his wives in triumph” (The Beggar’s Opera III, xvi, lines12-13). I find this absolutely hysterical and intriguing, because the audience is given the opportunity to see how this performance is masterminded by the beggar himself, and that it is indeed, ‘the beggar’s opera’. Additionally, the notion that justice will still be served “in the strict poetical sense” (The Beggar’s Opera III, xvi, line 3) as Macheath escapes death, but is forced to face the two women he wrongs, playfully suggests that marriage is a more severe punishment than death! Macheath himself states, “So it seems, I am not left to my choice, but must have a wife at last” (The Beggar’s Opera, III, xvii, line 1). This punishment serves two functions; it allows the audience to enjoy a witty joke about marriage, but given Macheath’s self-proclaimed love for many different women, and his typical role as the one in charge, this is truly the ultimate punishment for him.

The Player also brings humor to the second to last scene, but in a more subtle manner in that he discuss an opera with the knowledge typically belonging to someone of the higher class. The Player tells the Beggar,“…for an opera must end happily” (The Beggar’s Opera III, xvi, line . If one were to read further into this line, one could surmise that the Player is in some way attempting to align himself with the command that we see from the Beggar, insofar as he is in some ways informing the audience of the conventions of something as high class as an opera.

In all, these two scenes encompass the fun, humor, and irony as the play's title suggests.



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

In January 1728, the audience for The Beggar’s Opera must have been having a rollicking good time through the first two acts and even into the third. Good jokes and beautiful music abound. I can imagine that a shadow hung over the production as well, though – Macheath is so clearly modeled on Jack Sheppard, and the 18th century audience would thus have expected Macheath’s eventual death in a way that a contemporary reader/audience member does not. This expectation must have built steadily throughout the play, so I’m guessing the audience’s immediate reaction to Act III, Scene xvi must have been shock.

The reprieve for Macheath was probably even more shocking given that it happens during a scene that audience likely assumed was the epilogue, where by definition the action of the play is finished. It also involves a starkly metadramatic move, where the supposed playwright, the beggar character, reaches into the reality of the play and “edits” it on the fly.

In my own history of watching plays and movies, I’ve been conditioned to expect twists from a certain genres, like mysteries and thrillers, so even when they do surprise, it’s an expected surprise, if that makes sense. The only time I can remember feeling true shock at an ending was when I watched Inglorious Basterds for the first time (I suppose I should say SPOILER ALERT here) – that total feeling of disorientation (“Wait, they killed Hitler?”) was so intense that it was both giddy and also almost queasy at the same time; it made me understand why we compare dramatic twists to roller coasters. I can only imagine the audience for The Beggar’s Opera must have felt the same way.

The final scene of The Beggar’s Opera wonderfully pulls the audience from the story of Polly, Macheath, et al to aptly set the final decisions of the opera in the hands of the beggar, whom up until now, has been eclipsed by the fun ribaldry of the tale before us. This nicely points out once again that this piece isn’t your average opera despite the similarities amongst this and those performed for the elite.
That said, there is something I can’t quite decipher and I feel I am on the cusp of a delicious discovery if I could just make it out. When we return to the scene after hearing once again from the beggar, I am mesmerized by Macheath’s final lines to Polly: “. . . . I take Polly for mine [To Polly] And for life, you slut – for we were really married. As for the rest – but at present keep your own secret” (III.xvii.7-9). These final lines have me transfixed in wondering what it might be that Polly and Macheath know and no one else does – I want to know their secret too!
Because we’ve spoken so much about inversion and flipping things inside out, I wonder if all this scheming and backstabbing were not already known by Polly and Macheath – that somehow we, both viewing and reading audience, once again played into the hands of schemers who have planned and landed exactly where they wanted to all along: Polly with a husband that the law has set free for her consumption, and for Macheath, freedom from jail and a life in which all of his other “wives” will support both Macheath and therefore Polly)? My gut instinct tells me somehow Polly has been the master player throughout this opera somehow. Or, is this simply a wonderful ploy by Gay to get the audience to return a second (or even third) night to try and work out what it is that Polly and Macheath know, thereby enabling the picking of our pockets by Gay? I’m excited to hear what others saw in these lines tomorrow.

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

By the last two slippery scenes of Act III, the 29 January, 1728 audience was hooked. The reaction of the audience to the first presentation of The Beggar’s Opera was initially not positive. The theatre-goers indicated that they felt cheated because there was no opening music. “[T]he audience, not being then much acquainted with the nature of operas, expected the usual music before the drawing up of the curtain—finding themselves…likely to be bilked out of their first and second music, they expressed great disapprobation” (Oxberry 177). Even friends and supporters of Gay, such as Pope and the third Duke of Queensbury were “in great uncertainty of the event” (Spence 106-107). However, as the play unfolded, appreciation and enthusiasm rose. Pope found comforting that the Duke of Argyle approved the performance. Spence writes that “the good nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamor of applause” (106-107).

I would imagine that the audience would be standing on its feet, cheering wildly: the men laughing and calling Gay a rascal; the ladies rapidly fanning themselves and making noises of gaiety, relief, satisfaction, and above all else, approval of this new form of entertainment that Gay had created out of a blend – to use the term lightly – of high-brow and common elements. Their change in attitude is not surprising. Gay used characterizations, circumstances, and musical elements that were to various degrees familiar to the opera/theatre goers: the new lyrics were set to tunes widely known and recognized; the audience members would have been aware that a population of thieves, highwaymen, fences, and prostitutes co-existed in and around their communities and would probably have been titillated to observe them intimately and safely. And, Gay gave his audience a version of history that they probably found more palatable.

Gay’s Macheath serves as the operatic embodiment of John (Jack) Sheppard, the notorious criminal and escape artist. Sheppard was a folk hero, celebrated because he escaped from the law four times. However, Sheppard failed in his fifth attempt and was executed in 1724. Similarly, Macheath’s women, Polly and Lucy, helped him escape twice, but he was captured again and like Sheppard, sentenced to die. But Gay’s player intervenes: “But, honest friend, I hope you don’t intend that Macheath shall be really executed” (114). The beggar/playwright argues that he wanted to stick to a realistic ending which, in my opinion, would have resulted in the death of Macheath, according to the prevailing legal, social, and political orders. But the player insists that “The catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an opera must end happily…all this we must do to comply with the taste of the town” (114). So, this is where art did not mirror life. Macheath was returned to his women, and the play ended happily. The audience, no doubt, received the verdict with great relief and delight because Gay managed to portray Macheath as a victimized, personable soul who deserved their sympathy.



Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. London: Methuen Drama, 2010.
Oxberry, William. Dramatic Biography, 5 vols. London: D. Virtue, 1825-26. IV.
Spence, Joseph. Observations, Anecdotes, and characters of Books and Men. Ed. James M. Osborn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.