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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.
John Gay (/ɡeɪ/; 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.
Biography of John Gay. John Gay was an English poet and playwright, born and baptized in Barnstaple on September 16, 1685. After completing his education and a brief apprenticeship with a silk and velvet merchant in London, Gay turned to writing.
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.
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