Thesis and Critical Analysis of The Beggar's Opera

Organized Crime in The Beggar's Opera

Directions: Please write a thesis and critical analysis of the Beggar’s Opera.

1. How does the world of organized crime in The Beggar’s Opera resemble the world of legal commerce?  How might this resemblance invite judgments about either or both “worlds”?

2. Macheath, Lockit, and other characters in this play often assert their “honor” (e.g. pp. 2580-82).  Should audiences believe all (or some or none) of these claims?  On what do you base your answer?

3. How is law/the legal system treated in this play?  How does the treatment compare and contrast with the treatment in Volpone? What significance do you attach to the similarities and/or differences?

4. In what ways does love disturb the prevailing norms in the world of The Beggar’s Opera?

5. In what ways does The Beggar’s Opera parody or satirize normative ideas about marriage?  Which term—parody or satire—is most appropriate for the treatment of this topic in the play?

6. How does the concluding meta-theatrical commentary (i.e. the dialogue between the “player” and the “beggar”) invite audiences to reflect on the concept of justice?

Restoration Drama

Restoration plays were often comedies that used ridicule to set up and police the boundaries of behavior in the new order.  Stagings of classic tragedies and Shakespearean plays revolved around questions of keeping the “unities” (conventions requiring that the represented actions occur in only one location, last no longer than one day, and have a unified plot without competing subplots). Much drama criticism theorized about the need to follow these “rules,” and the theories about their ties to ancient “authority” served as displaced inquiries into the broader question of whether “modern” governments have to follow “ancient” precedent or can depart from them on their own authority.  (Students in my class on Literary Criticism study this matter in some detail.)  During the Restoration, many critics are skeptical about the quality of Shakespeare’s work because it ignores the unities; as the 18th-century progresses and people become comfortable with modern authority, Shakespeare’s reputation rises.  Samuel Johnson’s rejection of the unities is a pivotal point in this pattern.

Fear of public unrest leads to theatrical regulation soon after Gay during the 18th century.  A licensing act passed in 1737 required playscripts to be submitted to a censor prior to performance, and revisions of the text could be required before performance could be allowed to occur (or permission to perform could be denied).  This system remained in place until the 1960s (yes, 1960s; that’s not a typo for 1860s), but enforcement varied and performances could make many clever departures from script.  Regulations also allowed serious plays to be performed only in two London theaters—Covent Garden and Drury Lane.  Other theaters had to stage melodramas, musical plays, pantomimes or any of a host of other hybrid forms.

Pre-performance censorship of plays contrasts with the treatment of print texts, which come under “copyright” for the first time during the 18th century.  Replacing licensing laws that required texts to be evaluated before publication would be allowed, copyright allowed authors to publish what they chose, but it did not exempt them and their publishers from legal action if their publications were judged seditious or blasphemous. Theater remained important throughout the 18th century and became ever more diverse and spectacular.  Gay’s Beggar’s Opera is an early example of an exuberant hybrid, a “mock” opera.  But the Beggar’s Opera also encourages serious consideration of many topics from gender relations to political authority.