'Whore and rogue they call husband and wife:
All professions be-rogue one another'
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 The 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,...

"Gamesters and Highwaymen are generally very good to their Whores, but they are very Devils to their Wives."
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 portrait of a society in which statesmen and outlaws, colonialists and pirates, are impossible to tell apart.
With The Beggar's Opera, John Gay created one of the most enduringly popular works in English theatre history, and invented a new dramatic form, the ballad opera. Gay's daring mixture of caustic political satire,...