John Gay

John Gay

September 16 is the birthday of English poet and dramatist, friend of Pope and Swift, John Gay. He is best known for his play, The Beggar's Opera (1728), which was the basis for Kurt Weil and Bertold Brecht's classical work, The Threepenny Opera. Gay's play was very successful, earning him a great deal of money that, in turn, allowed him to pursue two of his passions, drinking and gambling. The play's sequel, Polly, was suppressed by British prime minister Robert Walpole, which, of course, only made it that much more sought after.

Let us drink and sport to-day,
Ours is not to-morrow:
Love with youth flies swift away,
Age is naught but sorrow.
Dance and sing,
Time's on the wing,
Life never knows the return of spring.
- The Beggar's Opera

Born in 1685 at Barnstaple in Devon during the reign of Charles II, Gay was the youngest son of William Gay. His parents died at a young age, and he was raised by an uncle, the Reverend John Hammer. He was educated at Barnstable Grammar School, after which he began life as an an apprentice to a London silk dealer.

But such work was not Gay's forte, and he soon found his way to London's literary and social circles. In 1712-14, he worked as a steward in the household of the Duchess of Monmouth. Then, through the sponsorship of Jonathan Swift, Gay joined the household of Lord Clarendon, the Tory Party's envoy to Hanover, with whom he journeyed to the Continent. Gay's friendly and ingratiating manner won over many friends, not a few of whom were courtiers who found employment for him, either in their own households or with the Government. But when Queen Anne died and the Tory government failed, Gay was on his own.

After losing a small fortune in a South Seas trading company deal, Gay was appointed Lottery Commissioner, a post he held nearly to the end of his life. He never married, choosing to divide his time between friends, who included the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry and members of the Scriblerians, including Swift and Pope.

Gay's first publication was the poem, Wine, in 1708. It was followed three years later by the pamphlet, The Present State of Wit. Around the same time, he met Pope and began inhabiting the fashionable coffee houses around town. He dedicated his first important poem, The Rural Sports (1713), to Pope. The long, meandering poem pokes fun at the "art" of hunting and fishing. Gay then wrote his first satirical play, The What D'ye Call It, in 1716.

The Beggar's Opera was first performed when the author was 43. John Pepusch, a German musician, wrote popular songs for the play. The oft-imitated story of highwaymen and corrupt law-keepers is popular even today. Its sequel, Polly (1729), was published with the help of the Duchess of Queensberry. The Beggar's Opera was the earliest of the ballad operas written to be entertainment for the common citizenry, as opposed to high art. Ballad operas advance the story by interspersing prose with songs. Gay's work, a satire of corrupt government, was a thinly veiled attack on Britain's ruling party and Prime Minister Robert Walpole, who had placed several unpopular restrictions on the theater. Polly was banned outright.

As with Fielding's Jonathan Wild the Great (1734), Gay's work was a mock heroic set in the London criminal underworld. The idea for the opera was provided by Swift, who suggested that the morals of the people in London's Newgate prison did not differ that much from those of polite society.

In the story, the receiver of stolen goods, Peachum, has a profitable business arrangement with Macheath, a highwayman. However, Peachum's daughter Polly falls in love with the criminal. Peachum informs against Macheath, who is imprisoned in Newgate, in order to collect the reward and to get rid of his son-in-law. The warden's daughter, Lucy Lockit, also succumbs to MacHeath's charms, and Macheath uses that as an opportunity to escape. Apprehended in a brothel, Macheath is saved from the gallows at the last moment, when one of the players secures his release.

BEGGAR. Through the whole Piece you may observe such a Similitude of Manners in high and low Life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable Vices) the fine Gentlemen imitate the Gentlemen of the Road, or the Gentlemen of the Road, the fine Gentlemen. -- -- Had the Play remain'd, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent Moral. 'Twould have shown that the lower sort of People have their Vices in a degree as well as the Rich: And that they are punish'd for them.
- The Beggar's Opera

Among Gay's other works are his finest poem: Trivia; or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), a survey of the conditions of life in the capital; The Shepherd's Weeks (1714), a series of mock-classical poems in a pastoral setting; and Fables (1727-38), brief, satirical moral tales. Gay also wrote the libretto for Händel's work, Acis and Galatea.

In his declining years, Gay lived mainly with two of his patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry in Wiltshire. He returned to London in 1732, where he died on December 4. In his own epitaph, the writer held to his humorous outlook on life:

Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, and now I know it."

Author, poet, and playwright John Gay is buried in London's Westminster Abbey.

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