John Gay s The Beggar s Opera - 1224 Words

Wrought with double irony and an overall sense of mock-pastoral, English playwright John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) expresses the ironic dynamic between the central characters Macheath and Peachum. Even the names of the characters comically resemble their occupations within the play, Peachum’s being a play on the word â€Å"peach† which means to bring one to trial, while Macheath’s meaning â€Å"son of heath† and being a play on the heaths of London, which were prime places for highwaymen (Tillotson et al.). While Gay used both characters as a political satire towards Jonathan Wild and the then Prime Minister Robert Walpole (after all, The Beggar’s Opera was a political satire first and a potential literary commentary second), they also mocked the traditional roles of hero and villain by switching their positions in an ironic fashion. Throughout the play, Peachum expresses how, despite his rather nefarious act of â€Å"peaching † criminals, he does not view himself as a villain. Rather, he views himself as a tragic hero, reigning high above the cheats of the world and putting them in their rightful place: whether it be the gallows or under his thumb. Such a concept creates the second layer of irony, the first being that, conventionally, Peachum fits many of the characteristics of a tragic hero. He conscientiously sees what he his doing as righteous—a trait of the pastoral hero. Within the first scene of the play, Peachum compares his occupation of peaching to a lawyer’s, bothShow MoreRelatedJohn Gays Use of Music for Satire in The Beggars Opera Essay2436 Words   |  10 PagesJohn Gays Use of Music for Satire in The Beggars Opera John Gay=s The Beggar=s Opera is a rather complex work, despite its apparent simplicity. Critics have interpreted it variously as political satire, moral satire, even (at a stretch) Christian satire. Common to many interpretations is the assertion that the Opera is a satire directed at both the politics and the art of its day. A fairly conventional interpretation of the play and its composition showsRead MoreThe Multiculturalism of London: Perceptions of Five Authors4563 Words   |  18 Pagesfive authors, i.e. Zadie Smith, Charles dickens, Daniel Defoe, John Gay and Ben Jonson and their separate views about London. Table of Contents Introduction 3 Discussion 4 The Ben Jonsons Bartholomew Fair (Fayre) 4 The Social Unifier Depicted by the Fair 5 The Fair and the Social Identity 6 The Bartholomew Fair of Jonson and Social Identity 6 The John Gays The Beggars Opera 8 The Slums of London 9 The Plots of Opera 10 The Daniel Defoes Journal of a Plague Year 10 In