The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera, a satiric play using some of the conventions of opera, but without the recitative. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama. The airs in the play are set to popular ballads of the time. It was written in 1728 by John Gay, and the music was arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. The play was targeted at the prevailing interest in Italian opera, as well as being meant to lampoon the notable whig statesman Robert Walpole and the famous criminal Jonathan Wild. It also deals with social inequity on a broad scale, primarily through the comparison of low-class thieves and whores with their aristocratic and bourgeoise "betters." It is the first, and only successful example of the ballad opera, although it is an ancestor of the plays of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and eventually Gilbert and Sullivan. Gay cuts the standard five acts to three, and tightly controls the dialogue and plot so that there are delightful surprises in each of the forty-five fast-paced scenes.

External links

• E-text of The Beggar's Opera