Dramatist and poet John Gay had a prolific and successful writing career in 18th century London, but is best known for his tour-de-force satirical play, The Beggar's Opera.
Gay was born to a prominent Devonshire family in 1685. In 1707, he moved to London to work as secretary to the dramatist Aaron Hill. Through Hill, Gay was exposed to London’s literary circles, where he made the acquaintance of such celebrated writers as Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve and Dr....
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Though set in the underworld of thievery, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera codifies a set of Marxist sexual politics in which marriage stands as the great equalizer of desire and power. An often aphoristic overview of the traditional power struggle...
Writer and satirist Jonathan Swift stated that “satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own” (Swift). Such beholders, as Swift mentions, use satiric narrative to convey social and political...
First performed in 1728, The Beggar’s Opera is exceptional for its focus on the lower classes. The playwright, John Gay, used this focus for a particular social and political reason: to criticize the lower and upper classes in order to elevate the...
