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John Gay (1685-1732) | |
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English poet and dramatist, friend of Pope and Swift. Gay is remembered for his play The Beggar's Opera (1728). It became highly successful and enabled Gay to spent more money on gambling and drinking. The sequel, Polly (1729), was supposedly suppressed by Prime Minister Robert Walpole, who thus only incited people to buy its printed version. Kurt Weil's and Bertolt Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper (1928, The Threepenny Opera), a runaway hit in Weimar Germany, was based on Gay's work and has had a profound influence on musical theater since its New York revival in the 1950s. Let us drink and sport to-day, John Gay was born at Barnstaple in Devon, the youngest son of William Gay. Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by his uncle, the Reverend John Hammer. Gay was educated at the local Barnstable Grammar School. After finishing school Gay started as an apprentice to a silk merchant in London. He disliked the work, but a genial person, Gay soon found his way to the literary and social circles. With other young writers he collaborated on Aaron Hill's journal The British Apollo. In 1712-14 Gay worked as a steward in the household of the Duchess of Monmouth. He then became secretary to Lord Clarendon, Tory envoy to Hanover, but with the death of Queen Anne and the fall of the Tory government he was left to his own resources, without a court appointment. In his last years Gay lived mainly with two of his patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry in Wiltshire. In 1732 he returned to London, where he died on December 4. Gay was buried in Westminster Abbey. In his own epitaph the writer did not give up his humour: "Life is a jest, and all things show it; / I thought so once, and now I know it." His grave was marked by a monument sculpted by John Michael Rysbrack. When medieval paintings were discovered behind the wall, it was removed. In 1708 Gay published 'Wine', a poem to celebrate the Act of Union between England and Scotland and in 1711 he published the pamphlet The Present State of Wit. During these years he met Pope and began to visit the fashionable coffee-houses. Both Gay and Pope were founding members of a literary group calling itself the Scriblerus Club. In London Gay supported himself by working as a journalist. His first important poem, The Rural Sports (1713), dedicated to Pope, glorifies descriptions of hunting and fishing. The What D'ye Call It (1715) was Gay's first satirical play, which he finished at the age of 30. The Beggar's Opera was first performed when the author was 43. John Pepusch, a German musician, wrote popular songs for the play. The story of highwaymen and corrupt law-keepers is still performed. Its sequel, Polly (1729), which takes Polly and Macheath to the West Indies, was published with the help of the Duchess of Queensberry. Polly was banned. Most likely Gay had the character and policies of Prime Minister Robert Walpole in mind, when he depicted an organized underworld and its deal-making and opportunism. A contemporary of Gay said that Walpole "rather than suffer himself to be prodeced for thirty nights together upon the stage in the person of a highwayman . . . put a stop to the representation of it." The Beggar's Opera was the earliest of the 'ballad operas' which were meant as entertainment as opposed to the serious Italian operas. In this type of play the action in conveyed in prose interspersed with songs. Gay's work, a satire of corrupt government, partly attacked the ruling party and Robert Walpole, who restricted activities of the theatre. Like Fielding's Jonathan Wild the Great (1734), Gay's work was a mock heroic, set in the London criminal underworld. The idea was provided by Swift, who suggested that the morals of the people in Newgate prison did not differ so much from the rest of 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 falls for him. Macheath takes his opportunity to escape. Recaptured in a brothel, Macheath is saved again from the gallows – now his release is demanded on behalf of the audience by one of the players. 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. (from 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 pastoral settings, and Fables (1727-38), brief moral tales modelled on those of La Fontain and such classical writers as the Roman Paedrus. For George Friedric Händel, who knew well many of the members of the Scriblerus Club, Gay wrote the libretto for Acis and Galatea, which included work of Pope and John Hughes too. With Poems on Several Occasions (1720) Gay enjoyed financial success for a short time. He invested the money in the South Sea Company, which promised to bring in huge profits from new trade routes to South America. When the 'Bubble' burst, Gay was temporarily ruined. In 1727 Gay wrote the Fifty-One Fables in Verse, which he dedicated to six-year-old Prince William. His reward was the post as Gentleman Usher to the two-year-old princess Louisa – Gay declined. In his own time Gay's poems and plays were subject to critique and for a long period literary historians worried about his character and the subversive nature of his work. Samuel Johnson found in Gay a "poet of a lower order." Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil brought in 1928 to Berlin their Dreigroschenoper, which drew from Elisabeth Hauptmann's German translation of Gay's play. Both of Gay's Beggar's Opera plays had been performed in London in the early 1920s with considerable success. Václav Havel's Zebrácká Opera (The Beggar's Opera) was suppressed after the first performance in 1975 due to Havel's political criticism of the regime. Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus Disapproval (1984) resituated Gay's characters in Margaret Thatcher's England. For further reading: Lives of the Poets by S. Johnson (first edition 1781); The Life and Letters of John Gay by L. Melville (1921); Mr. Gay by O. Sherwin (1929); John Gay by P.F. Gaye (1938);Gay, Favorite of the Wits by W.H. Irving (1940); Mr. Gay's London by A.P. Herbert (1948); John Gay, Social Critic by S.M. Armens (1954); John Gay, Favorite of the Wits by W.H. Irving (1962); John Gay by P.M. Spacks (1965); John Gay and the London Theatre by Calhoun Winton (1993); Deep Play - John Gay and the Invention of Modernity by Dianne Dugaw (2001) Selected works:
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