Beggar's Opera

While reading The Beggar's Opera, I realized that I had seen the play performed in high school and was in complete aww of the performance. Of course small high school theatre programs in Texas aren't big on opera, the play was modernized by rap and pop, but all the more entertaining! I had never read the play before and while I did, all the missing pieces fell into place. Before I had never known why Macheath was in jail and I just assumed he was a notorious bachelor who loved the ladies, not a thief who had multiple wives. One day I wish to see this play performed again, on a larger scale; it's such a great play and I like it a lot!

A fascinating concept I followed throughout the play was "love"; to love for money, or to love for love. In scene one Polly said she married Macheath for love and her parents disregarded the concept all together. Although the prostitutes don't actually "love", they do fond over Macheath and without hesitation turn him over to Peachum. Their love of money came before any regard they had for the man, to him he was just another man to earn a buck off. Later, Macheath claimed to love Lucy because he wanted to be freed from the jail and she was the only way out. His love was out of necessity, not out of love. When it came to his other wives, love was never really a theme with any of his previous marriages. In the end, Macheath declared his true wife was Polly, out of love, she was his wife. Being the helpless romantic that I am, I ate this play right up :)

Another notion I was brought back to was the women and their fulfillment of the role they were assigned to play. To her parents, Polly was property and not a young woman who sought love and humanity. The women thieves at the bar fulfilled their roles as women and as thieves for the shiny penny they would receive. Both Polly and Lucy's father thought about the money they would take from their daughters if they became Macheath's widow, seeing their daughter's for their worth to them and the profit they could make. Women had roles to fill and were subjected to fulfill them, to fall short of that role was unjustifiable. I think of freedom for women in this play and how it was restricted. To be a free woman was to be an outcast and separated from society, their was no freedom in marriage, and the was certainly no freedom in death.