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This major biography is the first full-length life of John Gay (1685-1732) for over fifty years. David Nokes's detailed and extensive research has unearthed several new discoveries, including hitherto unpublished letters, and possible attributions. Presenting Gay as a complex character, torn between the hopes of court preferment and the assertion of literary independence, this book is at once a lively and readable biography for the non-specialist, as well as a comprehensive and scholarly study. ... Read more

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The tale of Peachum, thief-taker and informer, conspiring to send the dashing and promiscuous highwayman Macheath to the gallows, became the theatrical sensation of the eighteenth century. In "Beggar's Opera", John Gay turned conventions of Italian opera riotously upside-down, instead using traditional popular ballads and street tunes, while also indulging in political satire at the expense of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Gay's highly original depiction of the thieves, informers, prostitutes and highwaymen thronging the slums and prisons of the corrupt London underworld proved brilliantly successful in exposing the dark side of a corrupt and jaded society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Birth of Mack the Knife best read in this Regents Restoration Drama edition
The beggar's opera,: And companion pieces (Crofts classics) is good as it includes extra writings from Mr. John Gay, friend of Jonathan Swift (the Irish cleric of The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift (Norton Critical Edition) and A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works (Dover Thrift Editions) and Gulliver's Travels (Oxford World's Classics)) and collaborator with Alexander Pope in the gathering and editting of Shakespeare's plays. Specifically the Croft edition contains excerpts from Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London.

We would wish very much to find a complete edition of the writings and plays of Mr. Gay, yet we are fortunate to find at least one here in this Regents Restoration Drama edition, the one for which he is most famous, as it was gratefully adapted by Mr. Bertolt Brecht some eighty years ago for the well known The Threepenny Opera (Penguin Classics), whose Kurt Weill music we groundlings know best in the one song Mack the Knife.

Here in the Regents edition we find the original play, with the longest section of this book the collection of sheet music with songs and lyrics, the melodies of which come from traditional airs of that time, as this was the earliest ballad opera. A brilliant introduction by Edgar V. Roberts presents fully the history, context, arguement and effects of this opera, which basically satirizes the felonoius larceny of the London aristocracy in the guise of cheap hoodlums and thieves, as if Dick Cheney's Halliburton ran and protected no more than your city, for a fee.

Read this book. Know your history. See what is happening today under our globalization and free trade agreements. Read this book.

A very helpful chronology completes this volume, setting Gay into the context of his day. This may be all we can hope for, and I certainly would like to read the rest of Trivia, and of Polly, and of The What D'ye Call It.

All professions be rogue one another
Absolutely deplorable people doing rather hardhearted things. Loved it! Couldn't stop reading it once I had scanned the first couple of lines. What's not to love about a cast of 18th century rogues and lowlifes? I just wish I could see this actually performed-- seems like it'd be extremely entertaining to watch.

Birth of the Modern Musical - John Gay's GeniusOverwhelms Italian Opera
From its first performance, January 29, 1728, The Beggar's Opera was an absolute success. In that period a box office hit might be continued for four or five nights. Remarkably, The Beggar's Opera ran sixty-two nights in London, and was produced nearly every year thereafter to 1886. Its popularity quickly spread to Wales and Scotland, France and Germany, and even to the New England colonies (and became a favorite of George Washington).

A London revival in 1920 ran 1,463 performances. A Beggar's Opera Club had membership limited to those that had seen at least 40 performances. Bertholt Brecht's twentieth century version, Three Penny Opera, was immensely successful too. A jazzy rendition of one of Brecht's songs, Mack the Knife, became Number One on the Hit Parade in the early 1960s.

John Gay's innovative musical appealed to the masses with its rollicking, rowdy, English lyrics overlain on old, sentimental melodies. Formal, highly structured, Italian opera was shoved aside by this novel musical form.

The cast was equally original, being comprised of cutthroats, pickpockets, thieves, streetwalkers, highwaymen, and a corrupt jailer. Polly Peachum, the sweet, trusting daughter of the roguish Peachum, was the only honest character in the play. Miss Lavina Fenton, perhaps the best theatrical singer of her day, became immensely popular for her role as Polly and at end of the run - the sixty-two performances - she married the Duke of Bolton and retired from acting.

The audience was quick to associate Newgate Prison with Whitehall; the deceitful, avaricious Peachum (Polly's father) with Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister;Macheath's band of rogues (Jemmy Twitcher, Crook-Fingered Jack, Nimming Ned, etc.) with aristocratic courtiers, and Macheath's women of the streets (Mrs. Coaxer, Dolly Trull, Mrs. Vixen, Molly Brazen, etc.) with ladies of high society.

This short three-act play has some forty-five scenes, almost all with musical interludes. Gay holds this myriad of scenes together through nearly continuous action, more akin to a modern film than to the conventional eighteenth century play.

The Penguin Classics edition (titled The Beggar's Opera, as might be expected), edited by Brian Loughrey and T. O. Treadwell, is quite good and not difficult to find.

Another good choice (and my favorite) is The Beggar's Opera published by Barron's Educational Series, edited by Benjamin Griffith, and illustrated by Keogh with full page ink-line drawings of the key characters. The lengthy, three part introduction - the playwright, the play, and the staging - is quite helpful. The initial musical notes are presented along with the lyrics.

The Beggar's Opera, Regents Restoration Drama Series, Nebraska University Press, 1969 may be more suitable for English majors as it offers a scholarly introduction by Edgar V. Roberts.An extensive appendix, some 140 pages, is a compilation of the music of The Beggar's Opera with keyboard accompaniments, edited by Edward Smith.

The Beggar's Opera and Companion Pieces, Crofts Classics, 1966, edited by C. F. Burgess is particularly valuable - and somewhat unique - for including Gay's enjoyable poem Trivia (subtitled The Art of Walking the Streets of London), other poems (Newgate's Garland, 'Twas When the Seas Were Roaring, Sweet William's Farewell, Molly Mog, An Epistle to a Lady, and The Hare and Many Friends), and extracts from various letters.A possible drawback may be the absence of musical scores in the text, although the lyrics are embedded within the play itself.

A delicious romp
Life is a jest; and all things show it,I thought so once; but now I know it.- John Gay's epitaph As we sit here, nearly 300 years removed from the debut of The Beggar's Opera,it's hard to recapture the effect that it had on the England of 1728. So lookat it this way, John Gay was the Sex Pistols of his day and The Beggar's Operahit London likeNever Mind the Bollocks....

Since Italian opera had first come to London in 1705, it had dominated theBritish stage. Replete with ornate sets, elaborate costumes, unintelligibleplots and imported sopranos and castrati, it was less art than event. Audiencesattended to share in the spectacle, as chariots swooped through the air &romantic tales unfolded on stage. Into this artificial world, Gay unleashed an opera about the scum of Londonsociety, set in taverns and thieves' dens. He tells the story of Peachum, afence with a lucrative sideline in informing on fellow criminals. His daughterPolly has secretly married MacHeath, a highwayman. Now Peachum and his "wife"fear that MacHeath will inform on them & inherit their loot when they arehanged. After berating Polly for marrying, & not having sense enough to liveout of wedlock, they decide to turn MacHeath in, before he can turn them in. AsPeachum prepares his daughter for this turn of events he tells her: "Thecomfortable estate of widowhood, is the only hope that keeps up a wife'sspirits. Where is the woman who would scruple to be a wife, if she had it inher power to be a widow whenever she pleased?" However, to the Peachum'sdisgust, Polly is actually in love with MacHeath and so, to her great surprise,are several other women, including Lucy Lockit who helps him to escape fromprison. So, the stage is set for a madcap farce. Mix in a satiric look at the corrupt administration of justice, some politicaljabs at the political master of the day, Sir Robert Walpole and songs like thefollowing:

A fox may steal your hens, sirA whore your health and pence, sir,Your daughter rob your chest, sirYour wife may steal your rest, sir,A thief your goods and plate.But this is all but picking,With rest, pence, chest and chicken;It ever was decreed, sir,If lawyer's hand is fee'd, sir,He steals your whole estate.

and you've got Gay's recipe for what quickly became the most popular play of the18th Century, fathering myriad imitations including Brecht's Threepenny Opera.A delicious romp. GRADE: A

Crime, Love and the Opera
The Beggar's Opera by John Gay is an artful yet honest representation of London in the early 1700s.As the Editor's introduction notes, it is a political satire that brings to life the actions of such notorious figuresas Jonathan Wild and Robert Walpole.In the Beggar's introduction thereader is made aware of the author's intent to mock the recent craze of theItalian Opera, which is considered by Gay to be thouroughly"unnatural."Immediately after that we are exposed to thecorruption of a city offical, Peachum (whose name means "to informagainst a fellow criminal"), as he is choosing which criminals shouldlive, as they are still profitable, and who should not, as they have turnedhonest.Peachum's character of both an arch-criminal and law man isinteresting enough in his daily dealings; add to that his daughter's recentmarriage to a highwayman (who the father then plots to send to thegallows).Not to mention what happens when the highwayman runs into an oldaquaintance of his, who visibly shows his earlier affection, and you havewhat makes to be a highly entertaining, emotional, and educational story of18th century London.The dialogue is well written, and the only problem amodern reader might have is the operatic aspect.I suspect that themockery of the opera is not felt as much when read but rather whenperformed.Note to reader: it makes it much easier to understand if youread the introduction.There you will find instances of "real"London that the playwrite is satirizing. For all lovers of period Englishpieces who enjoy a cynical wit. ... Read more

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" The Beggar's Opera, often referred to today as the first musical comedy, was the most popular dramatic piece of the eighteenth century -- and is the work that John Gay (1685-1732) is best remembered for having written. That association of popular music and satiric lyrics has proved to be continuingly attractive, and variations on the Opera have flourished in this century: by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, by Duke Ellington, and most recently by Vaclav Havel. The original opera itself is played all over the world in amateur and professional productions. But John Gay's place in all this has not been well defined. His Opera is often regarded as some sort of chance event. In John Gay and the London Theatre, the first book-length study of John Gay as dramatic author, Calhoun Winton recognized the Opera as part of an entirely self-conscious career in the theatre, a career that Gay pursued from his earliest days as a writer in London and continued to follow to his death. Winton emphasizes Gay's knowledge of and affection for music, acquired, he argues, by way of his association with Handel. Although concentrating on Gay and his theatrical career, Winton also limns a vivid portrait of London itself and of the London stage of Gay's time, a period of considerable turbulence both within and outside the theatre. Gay's plays reflect in varying ways and degrees that social, political, and cultural turmoil. Winton's study sheds new light not only on Gay and the theatre, but also on the politics and culture of his era.

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Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century Londonwill entertain and inform all who are interested in literature, history, and the city of London. This unique book invites the reader to walk along the dirty, crowded, and fascinating streets of eighteenth-century London in an unusual way. Nine leading experts from the fields of literature, history, classics, gender, biography, geography, and costume, offer different interpretations of John Gay's poem Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716). The poem - a lively, funny, and thought-provoking statement about urban life - accompanies the essays, in a new edition with comprehensive notes. The introduction paints a vibrant picture of London in 1716, depicting Gay's fascinating life and literary world, offering an invaluable guide to the poem. Together, these elements allow the heat, grime, and smells of the underbelly of eighteenth-century London come alive in new ways. ... Read more

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When Richard Steele remarked that "the greatest Evils in human Society are such as no Law can come at", he was not able to forsee the spectacular success of John Gay's satire of society, the administration of law and crime, politics, the Italian opera and other topics. Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera', with its mixture of witty dialogue and popular songs, was imitated by 18th century writers, criticized by those on the seats of power, but remained a favourite of the English theatre public ever since. With N. Playfair's 1920 revival and B. Brecht's and K. Weill's 1928 'Dreigroschenoper', Gay's play has been a starting-point for dramatists such as V. Havel ('Zebrácká opera', 1975), W. Soyinka ('Opera Wonyosi', 1977), Ch. Buarque ('Ópera do Malandro', 1978), D. Fo ('L'opera dello sghignazzo', 1981), A. Ayckbourn ('A Chorus of Disapproval', 1984), as well as others such as Latouche, Hacks, Fassbinder, Dear, Wasserman, and Lepage.Apart from contributions by international scholars analysing the above-named plays, the editors' introduction covers other dramatists that have payed hommage to Gay. This interdisciplinary collection of essays is of particular interest for scholars working in the field of drama/theatre studies, the eighteenth century, contemporary drama, postcolonial studies, and politics and the stage. ... Read more