The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera

Written by Mr. GAY

Nos haec novimus esse nihil.
Mart.

Biting Satire
A Unique Masterpiece
The Life of John Gay
The Life of The Beggar's Opera
The Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields
Recommended Reading

Biting Satire

Despite a prodigious output, the poet and playwright John Gay (1685-1732) handed one great gift down to posterity, and for that we thank him.

The Beggar's Opera is not an opera but a play, and not just any play, but one of the great glories of the British stage.

Which way shall I turn me----How can I decide?
Wives, the Day of our Death, are as fond as a Bride.

A scene from the original production of "The Beggar's Opera", the fourth of a series of five paintings by Hogarth in 1729. The original hangs in the Tate Gallery. The setting is Newgate Prison in London, and Lucy on her knees begs her father, the jailer Lockit (with the key on his arm) to release highwayman Captain Macheath (central) who is about to be hanged. Polly Peachum, also in love with Macheath, implores her father Peachum to reprieve him. This is an accurate reproduction of the original performance, down to the portraits of the original actors. The right-most figure is the Duke of Bolton who took the actress Lavinia Felton (Polly) as a mistress when the show closed.

It was an innovative glory, because it was not just a typical stage play, but the start of a new genre called the ballad opera, that would one day transform, with the aid of refraction through the lens of Gilbert and Sullivan, into the modern day musical.

A Unique Masterpiece

In The Beggar's Opera John Gay pilloried the high-brow Italian opera of Handel and many of the contemporary public figures as will be discussed elsewhere on this page.

In order to poke fun at Italian opera, Gay at certain points in the play had the actors sing songs for which he provided new lyrics, to some of the lewdest public house tunes of the time. This is one of the major jokes that is lost on modern audiences. Today some of the tunes are more well known to Gay's words than their original setting, for example "Cease Your Funning". The original words to the tunes which would have been so familiar to the contemporary audience provided the key to a joke that is lost on the modern audience. One of the most sordid songs was called "Would you have a young virgin". Gay used this tune for the more acceptable "If the Heart of a Man is deprest with Cares". Similarly, the great love song "Oh What pain it is to part!" was originally called "Gin thou wert mine awn thing".

However, it doesn't matter if some of the original jokes are lost; The Beggar's Opera is just as popular now as it ever was because the basic jibe of the play is a facet of human behaviour that will always be with us, and it is summed up very nicely by the beggar at the end of the play:

Had the Play remain'd as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent Moral. 'Twould have shown that the lower sort of People have their Vices in a degree as well as the Rich: And that they are punish'd for them.

But think of this Maxim, and put off your Sorrow,
The Wretch of To-day, may be happy To-morrow.

The Life of John Gay

John Gay was born in Barnstaple, Devon in 1685. He became apprenticed to a London draper for ten years, during which he was to experience poverty and ill treatment by his superiors. This, of course, was not exceptional for the time in which he was living. In 1712 he became secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth.

1713 saw the formation of the Scriblerus Club, whose objects included poking fun at "all the false tastes in learning". The members were Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Parnell, Atterbury, Congreve, Robert Harley and John Gay. Gay found these friends to be a great help in his career as a writer.

His first success came in 1714 with his poem The Shepherd's Week. In the same year he was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon on a trip to Hanover; however with the death of Queen Anne and consequent fall of the government, the mission failed, and Gay's desire for a position at Court was once again stymied for a long time, despite his frequent applications for consideration, and recommendations by his eminent friends.

1715 was the year of What D'ye Call It. Gay called it his 'Tragi-Comi-Pastoral Farce'. This is described by the Sphere History of Literature as 'one of the most delightful and neglected of the minor dramatic pieces of the century'. It lampooned incompetent professional writers who amused the audience in the wrong places.

In 1716 he published a poem in three parts called TRIVIA: or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London. This popular poem gave advice on such things as identifying street cries and avoiding pick-pockets.

Three Hours after Marriage was a comedy written in collaboration with Scriblerus members Pope and Arbuthnot, and was first performed in 1717. During the run of this play, leading actor Cibber fell out with Gay, having realised that his character in the play (Plotwell) was a lampoon on himself. The play failed.

Poems on Several Occasions was published in 1720, and Gay immediately invested the proceeds into the South Sea Company, on the recommendation of fellow Scriblerus member, Robert Harley. Later that year the bubble burst, and Gay was ruined, along with thousands of other investors. His health had begun to fail as well by now, and he frequently went to stay with Pope, who extended a helping hand to his friend.

In 1726 Gay started work on the first part of his Fables, which was published in 1729. In the style of Aesop, these fables remained popular throughout Victorian times. The second part of the Fables was published posthumously.

In 1727 Gay was offered the post at Court of Gentleman Usher to the two-year-old daughter of George II - a poor post. It was Jonathan Swift who suggested the idea to Gay of a Newgate Pastoral among the whores and thieves of Newgate Prison. When shown the finished result in 1727, Swift disliked it. Drury Lane turned it down, however John Rich, owner of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, realised that the work had a future. The leading actor James Quin left the production, saying that he didn't like the part, and suggesting a certain Thomas Walker. So the production opened on Monday 29th January 1728.

It broke the record for the longest running show, with sixty-two performances, famously making 'Rich gay and Gay rich'. Rich's profit went towards the creation of the first theatre at Covent Garden, built in 1732.

The sequel Polly, written in 1729, was suppressed by Walpole. Nonetheless the printed version sold rapidly.

Gay wrote the libretto for Handel's Acis and Galatea in 1732, but in the same year his poor health finally got the better of him. He wrote his own epitaph - a wag to the last:

Life's a jest and all things show it;
I thought so once - and now I know it.

The Life of The Beggar's Opera

Extant in London at the time of the Beggars Opera were characters called 'thief-takers'. They would act as pimps for gangs of thieves, and after a crime had been committed (which was likely to have been orchestrated by the thief-taker) and the warrants for arrest published by the police, the thief-taker would hand him over and collect the fee. Jonathan Wilde was one such, and he was hanged at Tyburn Tree, Marylebone (on the corner of Edgeware Road and Bayswater Road, opposite the Marble Arch) in 1725. He was quite clearly the inspiration behind Mr. Peachum, who acted as a pimp as well for a side line.

One of Wild's gang was a crook known as Jack Sheppard, whose crimes and powers of escapology from Newgate prison (most notably his second escape in 1724) turned him into a criminal hero - just the sort of chap who would provide the perfect inspiration for highwayman Captain Macheath.

Grub Street in 1830 changed its name to Milton Street, and led north out of Fore Street to Chiswell Street. It has now been largely built over by the great Barbican Centre. However, Grub Street was not just a physical locality. It was a phrase that stood for earnest hard up writers trying to make a buck; cheap poets and sensational pamphleteers alike. These pamphleteers were not averse to writing about the most popular criminals of the time, either. In fact it was one of the biggest money spinners. Daniel Defoe featured prominently among the authors of these; and Captain Alexander Smith's Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen first appeared in 1713. Lives of criminals would be recorded officially as well by the chaplain of Newgate Prison.

Newgate Prison was the historic prison of London, and was situated where the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court of London) is now, on the road known as 'Old Bailey' (the court was named after the road). Being such a notorious prison and filled with various riffraff, it was to play a prominent part as the inspiration behind and setting for much of the Beggar's Opera.

It was Jonathan Swift, the famed author of Gulliver's Travels, who first asked John Gay 'What do you think of a Newgate Pastoral, among all the Whores and Thieves there?'

This print dates from 1728, and shows what a scandal the opera caused in the first year of its production.

A Burlesque of The Beggar's Opera
(Pen and wash - 1728)

The banner declares "Et cantare pares, et respondere paratae". The sketch seems to poke fun at the contentious rivalry between Handel's Italian opera and Gay's ballad opera.

The other stage is portraying scene from an Italian opera, in which a woman, surrounded by men, is being warned, or frightened, by a satanic figure with a sword. An angel called Harmony is flying from the English to the Italian stage: Apollo and a Muse are asleep behind the orchestra, which includes men playing a jew's-harp, a salt-box, a bladder and string and a bagpipe - typical instruments of mountebanks (itinerant musicians). On the left is a man reading the play-bills and another relieving himself. The audience is divided into upper-class elements on the right; lower-class, including a butcher, on the left.

Hogarth's Burlesque of the Beggar's Opera

The Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields

The home of Restoration comedy, harlequinade and The Beggar's Opera

Lincoln's Inn is not a pub. It is an institution - one of the four historic "Inns of Court" involved in the education of aspiring barristers. The associated fields are adjacent to the institution at Holborn in the centre of the modern day city of London, some five hundred metres north east, of Covent Garden. They are surrounded by The Strand, Kingsway, High Holborn and Chancery Lane.

The theatre was built in 1656 in Portugal Street, on the south side of the fields, as Lisle's Tennis Court (an indoor venue for the game of "real tennis", also known as royal or court tennis). It was leased by Sir William Davenant in March 1660 who converted it into a theatre.

It opened as a theatre in June 1661 with the Duke of York's players performing two plays. It was to become known unofficially as the Duke's house; indeed Samuel Pepys often referred to it as such - however, he frequently omitted to mention the name of the theatre at all, merely stating in his diary that he had been to 'the opera'. He also occasionally referred to another theatre near Lincoln's Inn Fields. The two plays that the theatre opened with were both by Davenant, The Second Part of the Siege of Rhodes and The Wit. Pepys attended The Siege of Rhodes on the fourth day of its performance and regarded it as "very fine and magnificent, and well acted, all but the Eunuches, who was so much out that he was hissed off the stage."

In terms of design, the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre was very similar to the two other important theatres in London - the Drury Lane (built in 1662) and the Dorset Garden (1670). The auditorium comprised of a raked pit in front of the stage and a steeper amphitheatre towards the back, boxes and two or three galleries; the lowest being partitioned into boxes. It was capable of seating about 600 people. The stage was about 35 feet (11 metres) deep; and it was the first theatre in England to have a proscenium arch. There was an open platform in front of the proscenium known as an "apron stage", on either side of which were several stage doors, each with a balcony above it. All the action would have taken place on the apron stage. It is likely that the theatre would have had slate floors, and therefore trap-doors would have been improbable. The theatre was also noted for being equipped with moveable scenery.

The celebrated actor Thomas Betterton made his first appearance here as Hamlet on the 24th August 1661. Samuel Pepys was in attendance and recorded that the scenes were done well, and that "Batterton [sic] did the Prince's part beyond imagination." At the end of October Pepys went to see Davenant's Love and Honour "a play so good that it hath been acted but three times and I have seen them all;" and just over a week later he was back at the theatre again. This time it was with wife to see The Bondman, which was "to both our thinking, not so well acted here … but for Baterton; he is called by us both the best actor in the world." Betterton also became well known for portraying the smooth man of fashion, a stock character of the Restoration comedies. He also scored triumphs as Hotspur and Brutus. Mary Saunderson, one of the early actresses of the Restoration stage, also made her mark at the Duke's.

Davenant's company became one of the two patent companies in 1662. This meant that they were licensed for the performance of plays and given a royal seal of approval, along with the company of Thomas Killigrew, who had recently built the first Theatre Royal at Drury Lane (the Bridges Street theatre).

Once again it is Pepys who informs us of the plays that were being performed at this time and also of some high society gossip. In May 1662 he went to see The Siege of Rhodes again, but records that it was not performed as well as it was when 'Roxalana' was there [actress Hester Davenport, known by her part in the play] "who, it is said, is now owned by my Lord of Oxford." Just over a year later in a performance of Hamlet he was surprised to find his wife's maid Gosnell on the stage "but neither spoke, danced nor sung; which I was sorry for. But she becomes the stage very well." A year and a half later, a night out comprising a performance of The Rivalls was less than successful for Pepys: - "the play not good, not anything but the good actings of Baterton and his wife and Harris. Thence homeward, and the coach broke with us in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and so walked to Fleet street …" The Duke's was now attracting the most famous playgoers of all time, and Pepys gave testimony to this in April 1665: - "All the pleasure of the play was, the King and my Lady Castlemaine was there - and pretty witty Nell at the King's house, and the younger Marshall, sat next us; which pleased me mightily."

Another notable success of this period was the first performance of Elkanah Settle's verse play Cambyses, King of Persia, probably in 1667.

In September Pepys went for a second time to see Mustapha, recording that it was "bravely acted; only, both Batterton and Harris could not contain from laughing in the midst of a most serious part, from the ridiculous mistake of one of the men upon the stage - which I did not like." The court was once again in attendance for Davenant's The Man is the Maister. "By and by the King came and we sat just under him, so that I durst not turn my back all the play … I found the King and his company did think meanly of [the play], though there was here and there something pretty; but the most of the mirth was sorry, poor stuffe, of eating of sack-posset and slabbering themselves, and mirth fit for Clownes. The prologue but poor; and the epilogue, little in it but the extraordinariness of it, being sung by Harris and another in the form of a ballet." Upon seeing it for a second time over a month later, Pepys declared that it was a good play after all.

Davenant died in 1668; and the Duke of York's players decamped to the Dorset Garden theatre near Fleet Street in 1670. Two years later, after his Bridges Street theatre had been completely destroyed by fire, Thomas Killigrew found himself having to move to the Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he put on three plays which were completely performed by women. His new Drury Lane theatre, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, opened in 1674, but at this point the Duke's players at Dorset Gardens had the upper hand in terms of popularity.

At the end of March 1674 the Lincoln's Inn Fields reverted to its former occupation as a tennis court for a period of 21 years. It was in the middle of this period, in 1682, that Charles Killigrew oversaw the merger of the two patent companies at Drury Lane and Dorset Gardens, with whose management Betterton and William Smith had been assisting Davenant's son Charles.

Betterton was unjustly deprived of the management of the Drury Lane theatre in 1687; and it was not until March 1695 that King William authorised plans for a breakaway group from Drury Lane, headed by Betterton, to return to Lincoln's Inn Fields. He organised the restoration of the theatre, and was frustrated by the smallness of the stage and limited accommodation in the two-tier auditorium.

An intense rivalry between Lincoln's Inn Fields and Drury Lane now commenced, and at first the former had the upper hand, thanks to the loyalty of the playwright William Congreve whose Love for Love proved a big hit, achieving thirteen performances. Betterton, despite his age, continued to play the lead roles; and the cast also featured Cave Underhill, comedian Thomas Doggett, actress Elizabeth Barry and the young comedy actress Anne Bracegirdle, who was already making a name for herself.

Five years after the reopening of the theatre the age of the company was starting to tell, and the luck of the Drury Lane company began to eclipse that of the Lincoln's Inn Fields. The latter's performance of Congreve's last play, The Way of the World, now regarded as his masterpiece, proved only a moderate success; although they did have some success with revivals of Shakespeare's Henry IV.

Betterton and his company left in 1705, and the building ceased to be used as a theatre until it was bought in 1714 by the former manager of Drury Lane, Christopher Rich, who died shortly afterwards, having started extensive renovations. These gave the theatre a handsome auditorium seating more than 1,400 and lit by six overhead chandeliers. The stage, now larger than that of Drury Lane, had mirrors on each side. The scenery was renovated at the same time. Rich's son John reopened the theatre on the 18th December 1714 with Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer.

In 1716 Dancing master John Weaver mounted at Drury Lane his 'Italian Night Scenes', and these balletic commedia scenarios were quickly imitated by Rich in A New Italian Mimic Scene between a Scaramouche, a Harlequin, a Country Farmer, his Wife and Others with himself as Harlequin and John Thurmond as Scaramouche. Thankfully after a month the title was shortened to Harlequin Executed; or, The Farmer Disappointed. Weaver went on to score a great success at Drury Lane on the 2nd March 1717 with The Loves of Mars and Venus; the first ever modern show to use the word pantomime in the play-bill. A month later Rich responded with The Cheats; or, The Tavern Bilkers. This form of mimed entertainment was to become known as a harlequinade, and it came originally from Italy, bringing with it the characters of Harlequin, Columbine, Scaramouche, Punch and Pierrot. Thus it was in the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre that the English pantomime (i.e. a precursor to the modern style of pantomimes) became established as a form of entertainment. Mythological scenes were combined with silent mimes describing the comic antics of lovers Harlequin and Columbine, and the production was peppered with songs and dances. So interested was Rich in this entertainment that he became greatly renowned for playing Harlequin himself under the stage name of 'Lun'. The illiterate actor had difficulty in learning lines, and consequently found his genius for playing a mimed role, continuing to do so for the remainder of his life.

For more on the history of pantomime please see "The Nights and the British Pantomime" on my page devoted to the Arabian Nights.

In the 1720's lively competition continued with Drury Lane. In the season from September 1724 to June 1725 28 men and 16 women were employed at the theatre. Records show that whereas Drury Lane concentrated on the performance of plays, at Lincoln's Inn Fields it was the afterpiece that was to the fore. In the season of 1721-22, on 62 occasions one afterpiece from a repertoire of ten was on offer.

The year 1728, of course, saw the first performance of The Beggar's Opera, and four years later, with the proceeds of the smash hit, the construction of Rich's new theatre, the first Theatre Royal at Covent Garden, was completed.

By 1736 the actor-manager Henry Giffard had started to occupy Lincoln's Inn Fields; however the theatre closed in 1744, and was used for various other functions before finally being demolished in 1848.

A little while ago I went to peruse the Lincoln's Inn area myself. I found that the Fields consist of a small park, with an iron fence to surround it. There is an oval path within the boundary fence, and a bandstand in the centre; and three (currently unused) tennis courts with various sports equipment in the south west corner. These are probably for members of Lincoln's Inn. All this is overlooked from the east by the marvellous buildings of the aforementioned Inn.

I then went down tiny Portsmouth Street to Portugal Street, with a sense of historical drama running through my mind. Portugal Street is where the theatre once stood. As I walked along Portsmouth Street it occurred to me that patrons of the theatre would have seen the irony between the low-down establishment that they would have been entering and the magnificent buildings of the law just behind it. Portugal Street has obviously changed much since that time, though there are one or two buildings that just possibly may have existed in the theatre's day; for instance some buildings related to Lincoln's Inn, like the "King's Chambers" and one or two pubs. There is also a modern theatre called the Peacock Theatre.

For Black, Brown, and Fair, his Inconstancy burns,
And their different Beauties subdue him by turns: