Name: The Beggar's Opera and Polly
ISBN: 9780199642229

John Gay

With The Beggar's Opera (1728), Gay invented the ballad opera. It is here published for the first time with its sequel, Polly, in which Macheath and Polly Peachum are transplanted to the West Indies. Together the plays offer a scathing and ebullient portrait of a society in which statesmen and outlaws are impossible to tell apart.

The Beggar's Opera and Polly

Nicholas Hanemann

Good as hell. Came at this one sideways, through a combination of the Threepenny Opera by way of the World/Inferno Friendship Society and Marcus Rediker’s Villains of All Nations. Both plays are valuable in their own right, and the various performances of the airs from The Beggars Opera available to listen to along with the readings are absolutely enriching. However, even without the benefit of the accompaniment, I find Polly to be the better of the two, taking the contradictions central to the former and building from them some truly marvelous exchanges.