The Beggar’s Opera and Polly (Oxford World’s Classics)

‘Gamesters and Highwaymen are generally very good to their Whores, but they are very Devils to their Wives.’

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, well-loved popular tunes, and a story of crime and betrayal set in the urban underworld of prostitutes and thieves was an overnight sensation. And its sequel, Polly , banned in Gay's lifetime, boasted a cross-dressing heroine and a cast of female adventurers, pirates, Indian princes, rebel slaves, and rapacious landowners--a culture in which all human relationships are reduced to commercial transactions.