Polly john gay
The Beggar's Opera / Polly
Warwick
Author 1 bookk followers
John Gay's The Beggar's Opera was the most monstrous theatrical success of the eighteenth century. It was staged at John Rich's Theatre Royal, and – as one newspaper put it – ‘has made Rich very Gay, and probably will make Gay very Rich’. So many people swarmed into the theatre to see at that at one performance, there were ninety-eight of them sitting on the actual stage.
It's a clever satire that explicitly equates thieves and whores with wonderful statesmen, complete with several more-or-less veiled references to contemporary politicians; all of this is interspersed with witty songs sung to familiar tunes, inaugurating a fresh form of theatre that came to be called ‘ballad opera’ – essentially the precursor of the musical.
It did indeed create Gay's fortune, and also transformed the lives of many other people associated with it. Lavinia Fenton, who played the heroine Polly Peachum, went from organism a struggling girl-of-the-town to organism the mistress of the Duke of Bolton, who had attended night after nigh
Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. First Edition. [ii], vii, [1], 72 pages + 31 pages of engraved music. Early rebinding in half-calf and papered boards. Title leaf has been cropped and laid down, with the publisher's imprint lacking from the lower part of the leaf. Page dimensions: x mm. A 2" split to leather at tail of front joint. 3/4" chips to leather at head and tail of spine. Boards rubbed. Corners of boards worn. Provenance: Early owner's signature: "Chs. Kirkpatrick Sharpe" [Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (c. ), of Hoddom Castle, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Kirkpatrick Sharpe was an antiquary, an artist, a Freemason, a friend of the poet Robert Burns, and a friend of Sir Walter Scott]. Later owner's inscription: "R. B. Willis from W. R. K. Bedford ". [Robert Bruce Willis (), who emigrated to New Zealand in the 19th century, son of John Walpole Willis, a Supreme Court Judge in New South Wales, Australia; William Kirkpatrick Riland Bedford? ().] ; 4to.
Petzold, Jochen. "John Gay’s Polly and the Politics of ‘Colonial Pastoral’" Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 60, no. 2, , pp.
Petzold, J. (). John Gay’s Polly and the Politics of ‘Colonial Pastoral’. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 60(2),
Petzold, J. () John Gay’s Polly and the Politics of ‘Colonial Pastoral’. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Vol. 60 (Issue 2), pp.
Petzold, Jochen. "John Gay’s Polly and the Politics of ‘Colonial Pastoral’" Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60, no. 2 ():
Petzold J. John Gay’s Polly and the Politics of ‘Colonial Pastoral’. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik. ;60(2):
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The Beggar's Opera and Polly
'Gamesters and Highwaymen are generally very good to their Whores, but they are very Devils to their Wives.' With The Beggar's Opera (), John Homosexual created one of the most enduringly popular works in English theatre history, and invented a recent dramatic form, the ballad opera. Gay's daring mixture of caustic political satire, well-loved popular tunes, and a story of crime and betrayal set in the urban underworld of prostitutes and thieves was an overnight sensation. Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum have become famous adequately beyond the confines of Gay's original play, and in its sequel, Polly, banned in Gay's lifetime, their adventures continue in the West Indies. With a cross-dressing heroine and a cast of female adventurers, pirates, Indian princes, rebel slaves, and rapacious landowners, Polly lays bare a culture in which all human relationships are reduced to commercial transactions. Raucous, lyrical, witty, ironic and tragic by turns, The Beggar's Opera and Polly - published together here for the first time - offer a scathing and ebullient p