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William Hogarth The Beggar's
Opera, III, xi A satirical play with songs, John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" premiered at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln's Inn Fields, on January 29, 1728, and took London by storm. It paints a world turned upside-down, in which highwaymen and robbers conduct themselves in gentlemanly fashion and members of supposedly respectable professions behave like scoundrels. Hogarth's painting shows the climax of the play: the central character Macheath, a notorious highwayman, has been arrested and brought to Newgate Prison, from which he is to go to his execution. The young women who love him, Lucy Lockit (left) and Polly Peachum (right) appeal to their fathers -- respectively a jailer and a professional informer -- for his freedom. During the first run of the play the actress playing Polly, Lavinia Fenton, became the mistress of the Duke of Bolton. Hogarth shows the duke on the far right, sitting in one of the on-stage audience boxes -- aptly enough below a sculpted satyr -- and gazing at Fenton with admiration. |