John Gay (1) (1685–1732)

Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. 1728. Dover, 1999.
July has been my month for thieves, pickpockets, and denizens of mean streets, real and fanciful. I started the month by reading a recent fantasy novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, which inspired me to read Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, which brought me to John Gay, one of the early sources of it all. I have just embarked on Daniel Abraham’s new novel, The Age of Ash, another fantasy that begins with a detailed description of a three-person cutpurse team in action. Why does popular culture so love gangs of urban miscreants? There may be some wish-fulfillment in the dream of taking money from the undeserving rich. We admire the immoral efficiency of criminal gangs. Gay apologizes for not delivering poetic justice all around, but justice is just what we say we want, not what we really want. Even murder is fine if it is done with style. Murder, he says, is as “fashionable a crime as a man can be guilty of.” Lawyers are the worst criminals because they steal your “whole estate.” I have never seen the play produced and wonder how the doggerel and social stereotyping would play to a modern audience. But I could be wrong—we certainly like the updated versions. 4 stars.… (altro)