In the following essay, McIntosh disputes commonly held assumptions about Gay's satiric targets in The Beggar's Opera. McIntosh suggests that Gay's cordial relationship with Hande...
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In the following excerpt, Lewis connects Gay's opera to concurrent developments in the Italian opera then performed in London, demonstrating specific sources from several operas, including thos...
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In the following essay, Erskine-Hill considers the whole of Gay's dramatic corpus to illuminate Gay's experimentalism and the development of his most famous work, The Beggar's Ope...
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In the following excerpts, Winton examines the history of the writing and reception of The Beggar's Opera, focusing on Gay's close relationships with Pope and Swift. Winton suggests that...
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In the following excerpt, Fenwick Gaye focuses on the years 1727 and 1728, when Gay wrote and then premiered The Beggar's Opera. She pays particular attention to Gay's influential relati...
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In the following excerpt, Spacks suggests that in The Beggar's Opera Gay developed a dramatic form that ideally suited both his artistic voice and his political concerns. Spacks also looks at t...
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In the following excerpt, Armens considers Gay's view of relationships between men and women in the context of Restoration and early eighteenth-century stereotypes of feminine vanity and the ex...
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Critical Essay by William A. McIntosh
