First performed in 1728, The Beggar's Opera is exceptional in its emphasis on the lower classes. Playwright John Gay used this approach for a particular social and political reason: to criticize the lower and upper classes in order to raise the average. Disenchanted with the courts when the South Sea Bubble collapsed in 1720 due to a combination of corruption and economics, Gay began to distrust the actions and effects of the judicial class. His way of criticizing them is to equalize the courts with the lower class, whom he considers to have weak morals. This opinion was most likely shaped by the criminal celebrities of the time, Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. In The Beggar's Opera, Gay critiques the working and upper classes through the ironic equivalence between criminals and the court. By thus criticizing the working and upper classes, Gay elevates the status of his audience, the middle class. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayGay immediately introduces the lower class in this play as the main characters. It is a beggar who begins the play, in place of a lord or lady, by saying: “If poverty is a title of poetry, I am sure that no one can dispute mine” (Gay 41 ). We are then quickly introduced to Peachum, who can be compared to the aforementioned real-life criminal celebrity Jonathan Wild, as well as his wife and daughter. For Peachum, the concept of honor is very different from that held by most middle-class Gay readers. Peachum sees no sin in using the skills of criminals who work for him and then throwing them under the bus when it benefits him, saying, "A lawyer is an honest job, mine too." Like me too, he acts in two ways, against the rascals and for them; for it is entirely appropriate that we protect and encourage cheaters, since we live by them” (43). This not only comments on Peachum's loose morals towards honor, but it also introduces the idea of ​​the lower class imitating the upper class, which we see much later. Peachum also seems to believe that the only honor to be found in someone lies in their usefulness. He tells his wife about his criminals: "I hate lazy pranksters, from whom nothing can be obtained until he is hanged" (45). In doing so, he obviously does not view human life as anything other than a means to an end. Peachum has similar attitudes towards his own daughter, Polly Peachum, saying: "A girl who cannot grant certain things and who refuses that which is most material will make but a poor hand of her beauty and will soon be thrown into the common” (54). ). Beauty, for him, is only a means to achieve something else. This statement also leads to an irony of what Peachum considers "the common." Instead of his own people being common, he means that they are those who act upper class, which we will see later. It is a way in which the lower classes imitate the upper classes, mocking each other as "common." Peachum is again seen as a man of incredibly loose morals when he tells his wife, “No gentleman is ever considered worse for killing a man in his own defense; and if business cannot run without it, what would you have a gentleman do? This is intended to make a caricature of the poorer class, claiming that their morality is so much lower than that of the poorer classaverage that it is ridiculous. The way he represents these characters is essential to understanding what he wants to say about them to his audience, the middle class. In this play, readers are meant to make fun of the lower classes, not with them. There is obviously a feeling already present in the generation that the lower class imitates the upper class and that both have loose morals. This depiction is used by Gay to criticize not only the lower class, but the upper class as well. After all, there is a very present idea in this play that the working classes imitate the upper classes. We can see this when Mrs. Peachum says, "She likes to imitate fair ladies" (50) and "now the girl has fooled and married, because she would really do as the nobility do" (55 ). This clearly draws a line between what the lower classes do and the influence of the upper classes. There is an ironic equivalence presented by the lower-class characters between the criminals and the court. We can see this right away when an old woman near Peachum sings: “Through all life's jobs / Every neighbor abuses his brother; / Damn and naughty, they call husband and wife: / All professions are another. / The priest calls the notary a cheat, / The notary ridicules the divine; / And the statesman, because he is so great, / Thinks that his profession is as honest as mine. This and the following lines from Peachum that I wrote in the previous paragraph act as ways to equalize the upper and lower classes when it comes to their morality. Upper-class notions of what is civilized and honorable, such as marriage and statesmanship, are demeaned and labeled "whore and thug." Peachum later says of Slippery Sam, "for the villain has the impudence to intend to follow his trade as a tailor, which he calls honest employment" (46). This is both an example of the lower class believing in loose morals and the upper class being taken down a notch. As another example of equalization, Peachum says, "The man who proposes to win money by gambling should have the education of a good gentleman and be trained for it from his youth" and his wife responds, "What a business has to do? keep company with lords and gentlemen? He should let them attack each other” (49). These comments from the lower class outright mocking the upper class are meant to not only knock down the idea that the upper class is superior, but also allow the middle class audience to mock both classes at this time. In these lines, the middle class has the upper hand, as they can be seen to know that both classes are morally corrupt in comparison to them. Gay shapes this feeling in them by using the poor making fun of the rich. Gay uses the model of upper-class opera and mocks it by inserting ballads, a lower-class form of music. We see this when the beggar says at the beginning of the play: "I introduced the comparisons which are found in all your famous operas... I observed a beautiful impartiality towards our two ladies, which it is impossible for one or the other to be offended. I hope that I will be forgiven for not having made my opera entirely unnatural, like those in fashion” (41). This continues throughout the piece in terms of form and vocals. This once again confirms Gay's idea that the poor imitate the courts. This is just one of the ways in which he equalizes the upper class with the lower class in form. He also uses some diction in his class character's words.