Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child:
With native Humour temp’ring virtuous Rage,
Form’d to delight at once and lash the age:
Above Temptation, in a low Estate,
And uncorrupted, ev’n among the great:
A safe Companion, and an easy Friend,
Unblam’d thro’ Life, lamented in thy End.
ALEXANDER POPE: ‘On Mr. Gay’
Born in Barnstaple, Gay was brought up by his uncle. Ten years old when his father died, he was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London, before returning disillusioned to Devon. His first publication, Wine, appeared in 1708 and written to celebrate the Union of Scotland with England. The Fan (1713), dedicated to Pope, attempts to imitate The Rape of the Lock – and the way it compares humans with animals anticipates his Fables (1727), which were illustrated by Bewick (1779) and William Blake (1793), and remain the most popular of his poems. Gay’s first success, The Shepherd’s Week (1714), was written as a pastoral in the manner of Pope’s opposition to Ambrose Philips. Trivia (1716) was described by William Irving in his biography of Gay as ‘without question the greatest poem on London life in English literature’. Three Hours after Marriage appeared in 1717 and was written in collaboration with Arbuthnot and Pope. Poems on Several Occasions was published in 1720. A friend of Pope and Swift, Gay wrote some thirteen satirical plays and a great deal of polemical verse, but it was only with The Beggar’s Opera (1728) and its sequel, Polly (1729), that he achieved celebrity status, although both have been overshadowed by the updated version by Brecht and Weill (Die Dreigroschenoper, 1928). The satire pokes fun at opera seria: the quarrel between Polly and Lucy clearly parodies the real life rivalry between Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, who had famously come to blows during a performance of Bononcini’s Astianatte; and the character of Macheath was such a blatant caricature of corrupt government and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, that Gay’s sequel, Polly, was banned. While Gay was writing The Beggar’s Opera, he asked Swift and Pope for advice, both of whom were pessimistic about its prospects. Congreve was more positive: ‘Either it will take greatly or it will be damned confoundedly.’ The work triumphed, and the premiere at Lincoln’s Inn Theatre on 29 January 1728 was followed by a run of sixty-three performances. Alexander Pope, in Notes to ‘The Dunciad’, wrote:
The vast success of it was unprecedented, and almost incredible: What is related of the wonderful effects of the ancient Music or Tragedy hardly came up to it: Sophocles and Euripides were less follow’d and famous. It was acted in London sixty-three days, uninterrupted; and renew’d the next season with equal applauses. It spread into all the great towns of England, was play’d in many places to the 30th, and 40th time, at Bath and Bristol 50, &c. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed 24 days together. It was lastly acted in Minorca. The fame of it was not confin’d to the author only; the Ladies carry’d about with ’em the favourite songs of it in Fans; and houses were furnish’d with it in Screens. The person who acted Polly [Lavinia Fenton], till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town; her Pictures were ingraved and sold in great numbers; her Life written; books of Letters and Verses to her publish’d; and pamphlets made even of her Sayings and Jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England the Italian Opera, which had carry’d all before it for ten years.
Benjamin Britten made a version of The Beggar’s Opera, premiered by the English Group and conducted by the composer on 24 May 1948. In a programme note for the first night he wrote:
The tunes to which John Gay wrote his apt and witty lyrics are among our finest national songs. These seventeenth and eighteenth century airs, known usually as ‘traditional tunes’, seem to me to be the most characteristically English of any of our folksongs. They are often strangely like Purcell and Handel: may, perhaps, have influenced them, or have been influenced by them. They have strong, leaping intervals, sometimes in peculiar modes, and are often strange and severe in mood.
The film with Sir Laurence Olivier (1953) used a version by Sir Arthur Bliss. Gay also contributed to the libretti of Handel’s Acis and Galatea (1732). He suffered from an intestinal disorder and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph, written by himself, reads:
O ruddier than the cherry!
O sweeter than the berry!
O nymph more bright
Than moonshine night,
Like kidlings blithe and merry.
Ripe as the melting cluster!
No lily has such lustre;
Yet hard to tame
As raging flame,
And fierce as storms that bluster.
Gay wrote the text of The Beggar’s Opera and selected the tunes from a variety of sources, most notably Thomas Durfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy and John Playford’s English Dancing Master. He also availed himself of traditional airs and dances from Scotland, Ireland and France, as well as using melodies by a variety of composers that include Purcell, Jeremiah Clarke, John Eccles, Henry Carey and Handel – the introduction to Act II, for example, borrows a march from Rinaldo. The duet, printed here, is set to the melody ‘Over the hills and far away’. Gay’s original intention was to have the songs sung unaccompanied, but John Rich, manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre, urged him to have the text harmonized and the play accompanied by a small orchestra. The task was given to Johann Christoph Pepusch, a German émigré, who was the theatre’s musical director.
Macheath
Were I laid on Greenland’s Coast,
And in my Arms embrac’d my Lass;
Warm amidst eternal Frost,
Too soon the Half Year’s Night would pass.
Polly
Were I sold on Indian Soil,
Soon as the burning Day was clos’d,
I could mock the sultry Toil,
When on my Charmer’s Breast repos’d.
Macheath
And I would love you all the Day,
Polly
Every Night would kiss and play,
Macheath
If with me you’d fondly stray
Polly
Over the Hills and far away.