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John Gay (30 June 1685 – 4 December 1732) was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names.
John Gay (born June 30, 1685, Barnstaple, Devon, Eng.—died Dec. 4, 1732, London) was an English poet and dramatist, chiefly remembered as the author of The Beggar’s Opera, a work distinguished by good-humoured satire and technical assurance.
Poet and playwright John Gay was born in Devon to an aristocratic though impoverished family. Unable to afford university, Gay went to London to apprentice as a draper instead. While in London, he began writing journalism, including the pamphlet The Present State of Wit (1711), a survey of…
The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera in three acts by John Gay, performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London, in 1728 and published in the same year. The work combines comedy and political satire in prose interspersed with songs set to contemporary and traditional English, Irish, Scottish, and French tunes.
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today.
Jun 27, 2018 · The English playwright and poet John Gay (1685-1732) is best known for "The Beggar's Opera," a skillful blend of literary, political, social, and musical satire. John Gay was born on June 30, 1685, in Barnstaple, Devonshire.
John Gay, (born, June 30, 1685, Barnstaple, Devon, Eng.—died Dec. 4, 1732, London), British poet and dramatist. From an ancient but impoverished Devonshire family, Gay was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London but was released early. He soon cofounded the journal The British Apollo.
