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Act 1, Scene 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Beggar’s Opera, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Moral Corruption and Hypocrisy
Gender, Love, and Marriage
Class, Capitalism, and Inequality
Opera, High Art, and Performance
Summary
Analysis
Polly and Macheath sing together: Macheath asks if Polly was with anyone else while he was away, and Polly says that her heart is “constant” on him (Air 14). He affirms the same thing, and she concludes that, like the “great Heroes,” he must be telling the truth. He sings about how he floated from woman to woman until he met her (Air 15). She asks what will happen if he gets transportation, and he says that nothing can separate them. They sing that their love will carry them through, even if they’re banished to some hostile, faraway land (Air 16).
The audience finally meets Macheath, whose spirited, triumphant duet with Polly is a clear gesture toward Italian opera’s excesses. Of course, there’s something obviously absurd about their proclamations of love and their promise that they won’t even separate if Macheath gets transportation (is sent to the colonies as punishment). As the audience already knows—or will soon find out—Macheath is a womanizing liar, and his declarations of love are no truer than the notion that he is a “great hero.”
Themes
Literary Devices
But Polly tells Macheath that they have to separate, because her parents are planning to turn him in. She sings that parting will be painful, but it’s necessary to save his life (Air 17). And he says that he can’t bear to leave her. She asks if he will stop loving her; he replies that he’ll stay and die if it’s the only way to prove his love. She tells him to go and promises to contact him once it’s safe. Standing at opposite stage doors, they sing a final song: Macheath compares his sorrow to a miser paying a shilling; Polly compares hers to a boy releasing his pet sparrow and crying once it’s out of sight (Air 18).
This scene’s dramatic tension and satirical tone build together: each time Polly and Macheath declare their love for each other, they sound more desperate, but also more absurd (and, in Macheath’s case, more dishonest). Gay’s audiences would have understood that he was mocking the drama of high-minded opera, and therefore giving them permission to enjoy this drama without having to take it (or themselves) so seriously. For instance, the metaphors in Polly and Macheath’s final love songs are forced and childish: instead of comparing their separation to some truly tragic event, they compare it to losing a small amount of money or losing a childhood pet. In fact, by comparing helping Macheath escape to freeing a sparrow, never to see it again, Polly foreshadows his questionable behavior as a free man in the opera’s next act.
Themes
