Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera: The Ballad Opera and the Socio-political Criticism and Change - Dr. Azher S Saleh
Introduction
Ideologically, The Threepenny Opera grew out of its young
author’s experiences in Berlin during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), when
Germany struggled to establish a parliamentary democracy in the face of
economic devastation, notorious decadence, and bitter military defeat. More
than ten million Germans were without any source of income, and crime
proliferated as citizens were reduced to begging on the street. Horrified by
the poverty and mounting violence, Brecht took The Beggar’s Opera by
eighteenth-century English satirist John Gay and re-imagined it through the
lens of his emerging dramatic theories. Kurt Weill was asked to compose the
score, and The Threepenny Opera was born. The play satirizes class differences
and moral hypocrisy in society as inevitable products of the political system.
Furthermore, The Threepenny Opera proclaims itself “an
opera for beggars,” and it was in fact an attempt both to satirize traditional
opera and operetta and to create a new kind of musical theater based on the
theories of two young German artists, composer Kurt Weill and poet-playwright
Bertolt Brecht.
John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera
The term ‘ballad opera’ is used to refer to a genre of
English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to
develop in the following century and later. The earliest ballad opera has been
called an “eighteenth-century protest against the Italian conquest of the
London operatic scene.” (Lubbock: 1962, 467-468) It consists of racy and often
satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are
deliberately kept very short (mostly a single short stanza and refrain) to
minimize disruptions to the flow of the story, which involves lower class,
often criminal, characters, and typically shows a suspension (or inversion) of
the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period.
Brecht adapted The Threepenny Opera from The Beggar’s
Opera* (1728), a brilliant and popular
social satire written by British poet and dramatist John Gay (1865-1732)
(reportedly with the encouragement or assistance of Jonathan Swift and
Alexander Pope). Brecht and his collaborator Elizabeth Hauptmann thoroughly
reworked Gay’s script and transferred the action to London in the 1920s. The
original production used innovative theatre techniques and relied heavily on
the musical genius of Kurt Weill, who wrote the score for the unusual ‘opera.’
Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera is a comic farce, poking
accurate fun at the prevailing fashion in Italian opera as well as the social
and political climate of the age. It established a new genre, the “ballad
opera,” of which it remains the only really notable example, though its
popularity led to the work Sheridan and eventually Gilbert and Sullivan. Gay
cuts the standard five acts to three, and tightly controls the dialogue and
plot so that there are delightful surprises in each scene.
The basis for The Beggar’s Opera is that the thieves
and other low social people that inhabit Newgate prison are the same as to be
found in the government. The play was a theatrical success and became the most
popular play of that century. It is a harsh satire that daringly strikes
against class distinction and members of the royal court. The harlots,
burglars, and cutthroats are more important than the national governors. These
low-lives have the manners of proper English lords and ladies, and gain power
in much the same ways, proving that human nature is a constant throughout the
world. It also pokes fun at the judicial system of the period. There was a high
crime rate at that time in English history. The death penalty was handed out
for the theft of pennies from a person, but acts of murder and arson were mere
misdemeanors. In John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, for instance, the character
Peachum was a lampoon of Sir Robert Walpole.* This satirical element meant that
many of them risked censorship and banning.
The leading character of The Beggar’s Opera is the
swashbuckler called Macheath. He is a smooth romantic with qualities of both a
gentleman and a highwayman. He is a big womanizer. He says “I must have women”
since “I love the sex.” (Scene III, 30) A paradox of a character that speaks
King’s English and dresses well, but prefers to live in the faith and company
of cutthroats. He is polite to the people he mugs and steers away from
violence. Even though he cheats on the adorable Polly, the spectators still
believe his love for her is true.
The opening prologue is a dialogue between The Player
and The Beggar, who is posing as the play’s author. They make humor of the
Italian opera. The first scene takes place in Peachum’s establishment. Peachum
sings a hymn about the dishonesty of everyone. Peachum is alarmed at the
marriage between his daughter Polly and Macheath. His objection is for purely
business reasons, for Peachum is a “fence” of stolen goods who occasionally
informs on his patrons for the reward. He fears both the loss of Polly from his
business, who he related to a pretty bartender bringing in money from
drunkards, and of Macheath’s learning of any business secrets.
Act II has Macheath and his men outside Newgate. He states
his problem with Peachum, but when his gang want to do Peachum in Macheath
explains how he is a necessary evil and that “Business cannot go on without
him.” Macheath continues by giving justifications for cooperation with Peachum,
He is a Man who knows the World, and is a necessary
Agent to us. We have had a slight Difference, and 'till it is accommodated I
shall be obliged to keep out of his way. Any private dispute of mine shall be
of no ill consequence to my Friends. You must continue to act under his
Direction, for the moment we break loose from him, our Gang is ruin'd.
(Scene II, 29)
Macheath’s goal is to trick Peachum into believing he
has left the gang, but Macheath himself is tricked by eight ladies who call the
constable and have him arrested. In jail he bribes Lockit, the jailer, for
looser chains. Macheath however, is a lover of Lucy Lockit, the daughter of the
jailer. He promises her marriage in turn for his escape and she agrees.
The Third Act begins with Lockit discovering his daughter’s part in Macheath’s escape. He and Peachum find Macheath’s hiding place and go to re-capture him. As Macheath is brought back into custody, both Lucy and Polly beg their father for his life, but to no avail. Macheath is led off to Old Bailey for a trial. In prison Macheath drinks wine and sings portions of nine songs. Two of his gang come to pay respects and he instructs them to have Peachum and Lockit hanged. When Polly and Lucy come to visit he tells them to travel to the West Indies and have “a husband apiece.”(Scene 14, 66) At this moment a jailer calls that four more wives have come to see him and a fellow gang member calls desperately for a hangman because at this moment Macheath will really need one. At this point the Beggar and the Player enter to argue whether Macheath dies or not. The Beggar states that Macheath must be hanged for poetic justice. The Player states that this would make the play a tragedy and operas have happy endings. The Beggar finally agrees and Macheath is released. The play concludes with Macheath stating that he is legally married to Polly alone and there is a joyful dance.
Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera
Gay’s satire was an ironic reversal of the royal government
and the criminals of old England, which could easily be converted to fit the
Bourgeoisie and Proletariat of the twentieth century. In November of 1927,
Elisabeth Hauptmann began to translate the English play to German for Brecht.
Brecht’s main dramatic contribution resides in transforming Gay’s Macheath into
his own Mackie Messier, also known as Mack the Knife. John Fuegi emphasizes
Hauptmann’s imperative role in presenting this dramatic work to the public. He
says,
Given the existence of this text, plus the fact that Hauptmann was the only person in the workshop to render such complex English into equally complex German, there can be little doubt that at least 80 percent of the fabric of the work that Felix Bloch Erben would soon globally market was hers. Both in a published article and in a recent interview with me, Klaus Volker, one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the Brecht circle told me it was his view that “Elisabeth Hauptmann was responsible for as much as 80 or even 90 percent of the published text of The Threepenny Opera.” Though, later, Brecht would work on the text and contribute songs primarily taken from other authors, though the lyrics of the song “Mack the Knife” are almost certainly wholly his, the fact remains that the text bought by Aufricht and later sold to Felix Bloch Erben was almost exclusively written by Elisabeth Hauptmann. (Fuegi: 1995, 195-96)
The Threepenny Opera opens in the beggar shop owned by
Peachum. Peachum has taken control of all the beggars in London and runs a shop
that outfits the beggars and provides them with a location to beg in. A young
man comes in and asks for a job. Peachum makes the man pay him first and then
shows the man the five states of human misery before giving the man a costume
to wear.
When Mrs. Peachum arrives he asks her about his
daughter Polly. She tells him that Polly has been seeing a gentleman lately.
When she describes the man, Peachum realizes that it is none other than
Macheath (alias Mac the Knife), London’s most powerful criminal. He runs
upstairs and sees that Polly did not come home that night.
Meanwhile, Polly and Macheath have just broken into a
stable where they are getting married. The rest of Mac’s gang arrives and they
bring in wedding presents. Everything has been stolen, including the stable.
Soon the parson arrives and they sit down to eat. Polly provides them with some
entertainment by singing a song. After she is done Tiger Brown the Sheriff
arrives, but instead of arresting them all he greets Macheath as an old friend.
Mac explains that he and Tiger Brown served together in the war and that he has
paid Brown kickbacks on every job ever since. After Brown leaves the men
present Polly and Macheath a large bed to sleep in and then leave them alone.
Polly returns home to find her parents furious with
her for marrying Macheath. She tries to defend the marriage, but they decide to
take on Macheath and destroy him. Mr. Peachum tells his wife that he will go to
Tiger Brown and make him arrest Macheath. Meanwhile, Mrs. Peachum agrees to go
and bribe the whores whom Macheath goes to every week. She is hoping that the
whores will turn in Macheath.
Polly goes with her father and watches as Brown agrees
to arrest Macheath. She then goes back to the stable where Mac is staying and
tries to warn him. He does not believe her until she produces the charges that
are being levied against him. Instead of being emotional, Mac focuses on his
business. He hands the business over to Polly and tells her what to do. Soon
thereafter his gang arrives and Mac informs them that Polly will be their boss
while he goes away. Matthew tries to challenge Polly's authority, but she
threatens to kill him if he opens his mouth again; the other thieves applaud her
and accept her leadership.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Peachum approaches Low-Dive Jenny, a
prostitute, and convinces her to turn in Macheath should he be foolish enough
to show up at the brothel. The evening in the brothel one of Mac’s men is
trying to convince the whores that Macheath would not be so foolish as to show
up. However, no sooner does he say this than Mac arrives and sits down. Jenny
takes Mac’s palm and reads it, warning him that a woman will betray him. He
thinks she means Polly. Jenny soon sneaks out while Mac is talking with the
whores and gets the police and Mrs. Peachum. Constable Smith enters and tries
to arrest Mac, who knocks the man down and jumps out the window. Unfortunately
for him, Mrs. Peachum is standing there with the other police officers. They
take him away. Jenny wakes up Macheath’s man who has fallen asleep while
reading and missed the entire scene.
Now in prison, Mac is afraid that Tiger Brown will
learn that he has been playing around with Brown’s daughter Lucy. She soon
arrives and is horrified to see him in jail. To complicate matters further,
Polly arrives and also claims Mac as her husband. Both women argue; Lucy
indicates that she is pregnant and therefore has a better claim to Mac, but
Polly is “legally” married to him and she has papers to prove it. Mac chooses
to support Lucy instead of Polly because he is more afraid of Tiger Brown. Mrs.
Peachum then arrives and drags Polly away. Lucy, happy to finally be alone with
Mac again, hands him his hat and cane and leaves. When Constable Smith returns
he tries to get the cane, but Mac is faster than he is and manages to escape.
Brown enters the cell and is relieved to see it empty. However, Peachum also
arrives and threatens to disrupt the coronation if Brown does not find Macheath
and arrest him again immediately.
That night Peachum outfits his beggars with signs and
clothes in an effort to ruin the coronation parade the next morning. The whores
arrive, led by Jenny, and ask for their reward for turning in Macheath. Peachum
refuses to pay them on the grounds that Mac escaped already. Jenny, in a fit of
rage, tells them that Mac is a far better man than any of them. She then
accidentally reveals that Mac had gone straight to her place and comforted her,
and that he is now with another whore named Suky Tawdry. Peachum is elated by
this information and promises to give the whores the reward money. He sends one
of his beggars to get the police.
Tiger Brown arrives only a few minutes later. Brown
has decided that rather than arrest Macheath it would be far easier for him to
arrest Peachum and all the beggars, thereby preventing them from ruining the
coronation. Peachum merely ignores Brown’s threats and points out that there
are far more beggars than there are police. He asks Brown point-blank how if
would look if several hundred men were clubbed down on the day of the
procession. Unable to arrest Peachum, Brown realizes that he is caught in a
bind. Peachum then demands that Brown arrest Macheath and gives him the address
where Macheath is staying. Peachum lastly send the beggars to the jail rather
then that coronation.
Polly goes to visit Lucy in an effort to find out
where Mac is. It turns out that neither of them knows his whereabouts, causing
Polly to laugh and state that Mac has stood them both up. They soon hear a
noise in the hallway and realize that Mac has been rearrested. Mrs. Peachum
shows up with widow's clothing and makes Polly change into it.
The next morning, the same day the coronation
procession is set for, Macheath is brought out of his cell and locked into a
public cell. He is going to be hung at six in the morning, and has only an hour
to live. He offers Smith one thousand pounds in cash if Smith will let him
escape, but Smith refuses to make any promises. Jake and Matthew arrive and Mac
asks them for money; they say that it will be hard to get anything so early in
the morning but leave promising to find something. Polly also arrives and tells
Mac that his business is going well but that she has no money on her. Brown
finally enters the cell as well and he and Macheath settle their accounts
(recall that Mac pays Brown kickbacks for helping him). Having failed to get
the money, Smith refuses to help Macheath.
Soon thereafter all of the characters return and stand
next to the cage. Jake and Matthew apologize for not getting the money in time
and tell Mac that all the other crooks are stealing elsewhere. Even the whores
have showed up to watch him die. Mac gives a last speech in which he claims all
the small crooks are being pushed aside by corporate interests. Peachum then
stands up and gives the final speech, arguing that since this is an opera and
not real life, they will save Macheath. Brown enters in the form of a mounted
messenger and brings a special order from the Queen. She has decided to pardon
Macheath and to also elevate him to a hereditary knighthood. Mac rejoices his
good luck while Peachum remarks that such a thing would never happen in real
life.
In spite of the general similarities between the two
plays, Brecht took many liberties in The ThreePenny Opera. It is by no means
just a translation of Gay’s play. The London setting is replaced by Soho in
Victorian England. Peachum becomes a beggar king, outfitting, taxing, and
reporting on his beggars for the reward. He prays on people’s sympathies and
quotes Biblical verses with ironic dark comedy. Scenes are added, such as a
wedding scene between Mac and Polly set in a stable with stolen goods for the
reception. The police chief Tiger Brown, Brecht’s Lockit, an old army buddy of
Mac’s, stops in to pay his respects. But most important is the changes that
make Mack the Knife.
The adaptation by Bertolt Brecht was composed in the
Weimar Period of post World War One Germany. The World War had harsh effects on
society’s view of the arts and was the final that toppled the kingdoms of
Europe. Starting with industrialism and ending with the war, new classes were
rising to replace the aristocracy and peasantry. These classes were the
Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. New art movements called the avant-garde rose
to address the new modern society. One of the big changes was in the concept of
a “hero” in plays and literature. Before the outbreak, people thought of war as
noble and honorable, a statement of national pride. Wars had to this point been
quick, from six to eight weeks in length. But World War One lasted for six long
years, destroyed a generation of European youth, and left a dirty disfigurement
across the earth between France and Germany that is still present to remind
people today. After the disastrous war, in literature, including drama, a new
understanding of the hero and heroism
began to spring forth. The Threepenny opera was one of those great dramatic
conversions into the avant-garde. Even though The Beggar’s Opera was over a
century old, this unusual play had everything the avant-garde looked for. Gay’s
rapid change of scenes was similar to the montage effect that Brecht and others
were trying to achieve in drama.
Brecht’s version of the character bears little
resemblance to Gay’s Macheath. Gay’s Macheath is presented in The Beggar’s
Opera as a dashing romantic, a gentleman pickpocket, a Robin Hood type.
Brecht’s Mackie is unmannerly, cynical, and a toughened criminal. He is a
gangster who refers to himself as a “businessman”. He praises efficiency,
organization, and even keeps books. He stated that the only difference between
a gangster and a businessman is that the gangster “is not a coward.” (Brecht:
1979, 92) Although he never enters the legitimate business world, he tells
Polly that in a few weeks he will switch to banking because it is safer and
more profitable. Thieves like himself are being edged out of the market by
business and banks:
We lower middle-class artisans who toil with our
humble jimmies on small shopkeepers’ cash registers are being swallowed up by
big corporations backed by the banks. What’s a jimmy compared with a share
certificate? What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank? What’s
murdering a man compared with employing a man?
(Scene 9, 76)
Furthermore, Brecht turns Mack into a scoundrel who
kills eleven people, seven children, two women and two old men and rapes a
young widow all in one song and he continues to be immortalized in this song.
He has become thoroughly bourgeoisie, not like Gay’s dashing romantic hero. In
his notes to The Threepenny Opera, Brecht states that, “the bandit Macheath
must be played as bourgeois phenomenon.” (Brecht:1979, 92) Therefore, Brecht presents
him as “a short, stocky man of about forty with a head like a radish, a bit
bald but not lacking dignity.” ( Brecht: 1979, 92)
Brecht’s new style of theater allowed for the play to
be more brutally harsh in its satirical attacks on the class than Gay’s play
could achieve. Brecht allowed the audience to observe, judge, and decide how
things could and should be different whereas Gay’s audience got too involved
with the characters’ follies. Brecht offers alternatives in life rather than
Gay’s mocking characters that just make the viewer laugh at their folly. Brecht
wanted to make his characters amoral, but not immoral. Morality has nothing to
do with action. To emphasize this point he switched the goals of his characters
to be food and money, not power and like in Gay’s play. If there is a choice
between morality and bread, it would be bread. Mac himself declares that, “Food
is the first thing. Morals follow on.” (II, vi, 55) It is not just coincidence
that this sounds like Marxist theory, but Brecht did not have a utopian view
like communists in Russia. He did however, have strong anti-capitalist views.
In Brecht’s version, Peachum is no longer just an
underworld dealer of stolen goods. Now, he is a tight-fisted capitalist who has
built an industry of begging and regulates his myriad panhandler and pickpocket
employees in their various professional endeavors throughout the London
streets. His business is based upon the principle that hypocrisy is a marketing
technique:
I discovered that though the rich of this earth find
no difficulty in creating misery, they can’t bear to see it. Because they are
weaklings and fools just like you. They may have enough to eat till the end of
their days, they may be able to wax their floors with butter so that even the crumbs
from their tables grow fat. But they can’t look on unmoved while a man is
collapsing from hunger, though of course that only applies so long as he
collapses outside their own front door.
(III, vii, 59)
Peachum thus reveals himself a player in the very
system he seeks to exploit. In Act One, Scene Three, Brecht introduces one of
the most ironic moments in the play by having Peachum fire a beggar for eating
too much. The reader or observer does a double-take at this moment; after all,
how can you become an out of work beggar except in a world where capitalism has
taken over every aspect of society to such a degree that existence is no longer
possible except within the system. Brecht subtly criticizes the excesses of
capitalism by showing a world where even begging is a profession that has its
own rules and ethics.
Brecht affirms that “the character of Jonathan Peachum
is not to be resumed in the stereotyped formula ‘miser’, (Brecht: 1979, 91)
otherwise this character will lose its implication as the sharpest critiques of
bourgeois society, who does not seek to change that society, he simply exploits
it. As usual Brecht avoids the crude propagandistic tactic of presenting an
idealized opposition to capitalism; rather he concentrates on arousing our
indignation and inspires us to action by simply showing us a brutal world.
Consequently, the synthesis that will be formulated in the modern spectator’s
mind is definitely different from that dramatic presentation of Peachum in The
Beggar’s Opera. The basic conflict in The Threepenny Opera is based on Peachum
and Macheath, the former is in charge of all of London’s beggars, the latter is
in charge of London’s thieves. Stealing Peachum’s daughter is thus a social
insult, an attack on Peachum’s status in the London underworld. The theft of
Polly will cause Peachum to openly declare war on Mac the Knife in an effort to
regain his reputation. Thus, it is not an emotional conflict where Peachum is
upset about losing Polly. Rather, it is a social issue.
Macheath makes a similar observation as to the
hypocrisy of the commercially successful, but from the point of view of one
outside of the capitalist establishment. He and Ginny Jenny share a duet
commenting on the inherent problem with social moralizing separate from social
equality. Macheath opens with the statement:
You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching: that’s where it begins.
You lot, who preach restraint and watch your waist as
well
Should learn for all time how the world is run:
However much you twist, whatever lies you tell
Food is the first thing. Morals follow on.
(II, vi, 55)
The song that ends the act is one of the most famous.
The line, “Food is the first thing. Morals follow on”, serves as a basis for
much of the action in this play. It is an attack on the audience. Instead of
morally judging what Macheath, the beggars, the whores and the thieves are
doing, the song tells the audience to sympathize with them. By putting food
before morals, Brecht is issuing a call to his audience to consider the actual
circumstances of the characters instead of judging them abstractly.
Brecht’s criticism of the bourgeois society of the
Weimar Republic, so elegantly set in Victorian England’s Soho, remains one of
the great plays today. “The Ballad of Mac the Knife” became a popular jazz tune
in the 1950s and the work has inspired numerous artists. Attempts have been
made to update the play, but Brecht himself left it mostly in the original
form. It is one of the more difficult Brechtian plays to interpret. It is hard
to reconcile Brecht’s outspoken later Communism with the flippancies inherent
in the production, and with the fact that it has had repeated successes in
bourgeois theaters. The problems stem from the fact that when Brecht wrote the
play he was only beginning to explore Marxism and he did not yet identify with
the class struggle. The issue is confused, however, by the fact that Brecht’s
notes were all written after the play and also after his adoption of a
committed Marxist stance in 1929. Nevertheless, through its display of the base
elements of society, the play brought theater to the people rather than to the
elite society.
The Threepenny Opera is a commentary upon society from
the vantage point of the underworld. The people that move across the stage are
murderers, thieves, prostitutes, beggars, and corrupt officials. Each character
is handled so as to arouse an emphatic response and at no point does the
sordidness or immorality overshadow the inherent humanity, frailty, and lovability
of each of the characters. One’s sympathy is with these people despite their
open defiance of sexual proprieties, religious teachings, and the conventions
of justice, marriage, and business. (Ullman: 1959, 430) Bertolt Brecht
describes people caught, trapped, and debased by life. An unseen thread of
implied identity connects them to the world of light. They harshly mirror the
weaknesses and limitations as well as the corrupt practices that typify people
generally then and now.
One of the main questions posed by Bertolt Brecht in
The Threepenny Opera is: how are goodness and love possible amid so much
misery? Indeed, this and some similar moral and socio-political questions
preoccupied Brecht throughout his life. How, for example, can honesty and decency
be demanded from people who have nothing to eat? And who, then, will be guilty
of the evil they may commit?
The prologue is the “Ballad of Mac the Knife”, which
is sung while beggars, prostitutes and thieves are all enjoying a fair in Soho.
The ballad describes many of the things that Macheath, known as Mac the Knife,
has done. He is compared to a shark with sharp teeth, but unlike a shark he
keeps his weapons hidden. Mac the Knife always wears fancy “white kid gloves”
in spite of the dreadful crimes he has committed.
See the shark with teeth like razors.
All can read his open face.
And Macheath has got a knife, but
Not in such an obvious place.
As he slashes at his prey.
Mac the Knife wears white kid gloves which
Give the minimum away.
By the Thames’s turbid waters
Men abruptly tumble down.
Is it plague or is it cholera?
Or a sign Macheath’s in town?
On a beautiful blue Sunday
See a corpse stretched in the Strand.
See a man dodge round the corner…
Mackie’s friends will understand.
And Schmul Meier, reported missing
Like so many wealthy men:
Mac the Knife acquired his cash box.
God alone knows how or when.
Jenny Towler turned up lately
With a knife stuck through her breast
While Macheath walks the Embankment
Nonchalantly unimpressed.
Where is Alfred Gleet the cabman?
Who can get that story clear?
All the world may know the answer
Just Macheath has no idea.
And the ghastly fire in Soho-
Seven children at a go-
In the crowd stands Mac the Knife, but he
Isn’t asked and doesn’t know.
And the child-bride in her nightie
Whose assailant’s still at large
Violated in her slumbers-
Mackie, how much did you charge?
(Prologue, 3-4)
The song indicates that Macheath is to blame for
killing many men, stealing cash boxes, murdering a prostitute, setting a fire
in Soho that killed seven children, and raping a young bride. At the end of the
song the whores laugh and a man steps out of their group. As he walks away,
Low-Dive Jenny cries out that that was Mac the Knife. The introduction of Mac
the Knife immediately sets him up in paradoxical terms. He is represented as a
shark with bloody fins and hidden teeth, but at the same time he is described
in terms of “white kid gloves” in order to cover his bloody hands. These white
gloves, signs of pure hands, serve as a symbol of bourgeois society. Brecht is
essentially saying that Macheath covers his crimes by pretending to be
bourgeois. Alternatively, this can also be interpreted as implying that
bourgeois society commits the crimes and then pretends that nothing ever
happened. By transforming the stable into an excessively luxurious room, Brecht
again is using bourgeois decoration to hide the murders and thefts. The use of
furniture is paralleled by the gang in suits, a comic image since they do not
have the right manners. Thus we again see bloody deeds and bloody people parading
around as if they were common, normal members of the successful society. One
may note that Macheath does not deny his crimes; instead, he acts as if nothing
is wrong.
Another relevant fundamental
theme that emerges is that business transcends love in this amoral, capitalist
world. Love is made fun of by portraying it ironically. Normally a parent would
be swayed by arguments of love, but Polly’s parents instead advocate divorce
for her. When she continues claiming that she is really in love with Macheath,
Mrs. Peachum blames the books that Polly used to read.
Polly: Look. Is he particularly handsome? No. but he
makes a living. He can support me. He is not only a first-class burglar but a
far-sighed and experienced stick-up man as well. I’ve been into it, I can tell
you the exact amount of his savings to date. A few successful ventures and we
shall be able to retire to a little house in the country just like that Mr.
Shakespeare father admires so much.
Peachum: It’s quite simple. You’re married. What does
a girl do when she’s married? Use your head. Well, she gets divorced, see. Is
that so hard to figure out?
Polly: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Mrs. Peachum: Divorce.
Polly: But I love him. How can I think of divorce?
Mrs. Peachum: Really, have you no shame?
Polly: Mother, if you’ve ever been in love…
Mrs. Peachum: In love! Those damn books you’ve been
reading have turned your head.
(I, iii, 30)
This attitude converts “love” into a form of business
deal; there is no point in marrying unless you gain something financially.
Polly realizes this and tries to point out to her parents that Macheath is
financially well off, however, since he is a competitor to her father, Peachum
chooses instead to take this opportunity to ruin Macheath. The reduction of
love to mere business is furthered by Polly in her dream. She remarks that she
dreamt about the moon, a symbol of her and Mac’s love.
Oh, last night I had a dream. I was looking out the window and I heard laughter in the street, and when I looked out I saw our moon and the moon was all thin like a worn-down penny. (II, iv, 39)
The moon is equated to a “worn-down penny.” This gives
love two meanings and references, the first being that it equates love with
capitalism. Second, love is compared to something old and not worth very much.
This belief that love is worthless is held by all of the characters except for
Polly who seems to the only character struggling to achieve worthwhile emotions.
In Act Three, Scene Eight, the falseness of love and
marriage is dealt with throughout the scene. Lucy, the Sheriff’s daughter,
admits that she lied about being pregnant and shows Polly the cushion. “Oh,
that’s magnificent! Is it a cushion? Oh, you really are a hypocritical
strumpet!” (III, viii, 68) At the end, Mrs. Peachum has the gall to enter and
make Polly dress as a widow before Macheath is even dead.
Ha, Polly, so this is where I find you. You must
change your things, your husband is being hanged. I’ve brought your widow’s
weeds. [Polly changes into the widow’s dress.] You’ll be a lovely widow. But
you’ll have to cheer up a little.
(III, viii, 69)
This brutal disruption of the sentimental interaction
between Lucy and Polly serves again to make the audience feel less pity for
Polly. The image of her as a sad, broken wife does not hold very long either;
when Mac asks her for money in the last scene she is brilliantly evasive,
implying that she has taken over his business and kept the money.
Another example of that business supercedes love,
marriage and other sentimentalities are presented in the prison cell meeting
between Brown and Mac. Brown visits Mac in the cell to settle up their business
first. Mac even explicitly states, “The accounts, sir, if you please, the
accounts. No sentimentality”. (III, viii, 73) When Brown agrees, Mac yells at
him for only caring about money. Mac then reads his own epilogue, infuriating
Brown in the process by reminding his former friend that he has killed him. In
addition, Mac’s final speech is quite important. In the speech he accuses big
business of doing exactly what he does, namely being a thief. The only
difference is that the big companies do it with more money and legally. “What’s
a jemmy *compared with a share certificate? What’s breaking into a bank
compared with founding a bank?” (III, viii, 76) Actually, this is what he was
planning to do: Mac wanted Polly to take the money and set up a bank with it,
thereby getting rid of his men and entering a more reliable business.
Lucy brings up the issue of class for the first time
in the play. She tells Polly “You should have stuck to your own class of people,
dear Miss.” (III, viii, 67) Lucy is implying that Polly married outside of her
own class. The question then is which direction did she marry, up or down? The
answer is not obvious because her parents are actually in a similar profession
to that of Macheath. However, Polly clearly interprets it as meaning that she
married down. She elevates herself into the business class by stating, “I
should have kept everything on a strict business footing.” (III, viii, 67) This
line has another meaning, though it serves to accuse the bourgeois class, i.e.
the business class, of being unemotional and marrying only for money.
The issue of class re-emerges when the Queen raises
Mac to the hereditary peerage. By giving him a knighthood she elevates him into
the highest class, the leisurely class of aristocracy with guaranteed income.
This further undermines the issues of class present in the play; Mac manages to
leapfrog the bourgeois society and lands comfortably in the aristocratic class.
It also serves as yet another sardonic commentary on Brecht’s own society which
he saw rewarding people he considered to be criminals.
Brown: I bring a special order from our beloved Queen
to have Captain Macheath set at liberty forthwith [All cheers] as it’s the
coronation, and raised to the hereditary peerage. [Cheers] The castle of
Marmarel, likewise a pension of ten thousand ponds, to be his in usufruct until
his death. To any bridal couples present. Her Majesty bids me to convey her
gracious good wishes.
(III, ix, 79)
The songs in Brecht’s plays deserve some discussion
because they are as famous as the play itself. Brecht’s use of songs does not
represent any attempt aiming at intensifying or heightening the conflict of the
play, rather it specifically intends to detach the spectator from suspense.
Hence, when we argue that Brecht’s songs are designed in such a manner we do
not mean, at any arte, that these songs are forcibly injected as isolated parts
into the structure of the play. An examined reading of Bertolt Brecht’s songs
makes one deduce that they are thematically linked to the action. Therefore,
such technique helps the audience to question attitudes and behaviour which
have been taken as expected and natural. (Gaskell: 1972, 145) The Brechtian
songs always comment on the main action of the play; furthermore, it gives the
spectators time to think of what has been said by other characters or by the
singer himself since the tempo of the song is slower than that of the normal
dialogue. (Gaskell: 1972, 145) Brecht’s final goal is that he wants the
audience to leave his play with a logical desire to change society. By forcing
the audience to not empathize with the characters, Brecht is trying to make
people think about the play rather than feel emotions. This objectification of
character is requisite for the “work” of art: Aristotelian forms which induce
empathy, sympathy, and a perception of heroism, all create the illusion of
reality (in actuality, an ideological construct), but only when the audience is
at a distance, when they feel no personal kinship with the characters, can the
destructive mechanisms of capitalist ideology be exposed and resisted. The
songs are nonetheless bawdy, cabaret style works that invert the common
perception of opera. The songs serve as social statements by combining high
culture with low; they also are an attack on traditional Wagnerian opera.
This is evident in the first scene where Mr. and Mrs.
Peachum sing a song under spotlight which has nothing to do with their real
characters. Peachum sings a morning “hymn”, basically a call for thieves and
beggars to start their “sinful employment”. Peachum runs an outfitting shop for
beggars; he provides them with props and slogans and is paid a part of their
daily “take”. He laments the fact that humans are able to deaden their
feelings, forcing him to constantly create new ways of arousing human sympathy.
You ramshackle Christian, awake!
Get on with your sinful employment
Show what a good crook you could make.
The Lord will cut short your enjoyment.
Betray your own brother, you rogue
And sell your old woman, you rat.
You think the Lord God’s just a joke?
He’ll give you His Judgement on that.
(Act, I, 5)
Brecht here tries to remind the spectators from the
very beginning of the play that what they are watching is just a game not a
slice of life; it is a mere presentation of actors on a stage in a theatre.
(Ubersfeld: 1999, 27) This is, in fact, one of many Brechtian preliminary
attempts of initiating an epic drama and theatre, which will reach its peak and
maturity in the 1940’s.
In Act Two, Scene Five, ‘The Ballad of immoral
earnings’ makes fun of bourgeois society by attacking its nostalgia. One of the
main attributes of the middle class is a preference for an idealized past. This
is reflected in a great deal of literature, with concepts such as the “golden
ages”, the “golden years”, or the Romantic period playing a key role.
There was a time, now very far a way
When we set up together, I and she.
I’d got the brain, and she supplied the breast.
I saw her right, and she looked after me –
A way of life then, if not quite the best.
And when a client came I’d slide out of our bed
And treat him nice, and go and have a drink instead
And when he paid up I’d address him: Sir
Come any night you feel you fancy her.
That time’s long past, but what would I not give
To see that whorehouse where we used to live?
……………………………………………………………
But in the end we flushed it down the sewer.
That could not last, but what would I not give
To see that whorehouse where we used to live?
(II, vi, 44-45)
Brecht attacks this naive view of the past by having
Mac sing about his life with Jenny. Mac makes the couple seem idyllic even
though it they live in a whorehouse. Jenny also wishes for the past again even
while telling us how Mac used to knock her down the stairs. Thus Brecht uses
the two of them to combine elements of bourgeois nostalgia with lower class
crudity.
Brecht’s theater is intentionally extremely political.
The Threepenny Opera places blame on the capitalist society for the criminal
underworld that Gay presented merely in The Beggar’s Opera as a mirror-image
satire of eighteenth-century aristocracy. Brecht made some stylistic changes,
transforming the protagonist, Macheath, into a morally ambiguous hero,
emphasizing the parallels between Polly and Lucy Peachum, and creating the
character of Sheriff Jackie Brown, a former army buddy of Macheath’s who
protects his friend’s criminal activity in exchange for a percentage of his
spoils. Brecht writes in his “Notes to The Threepenny Opera” that,
The Threepenny Opera is concerned with bourgeois
conceptions not only by content, by representing them, but also through the
manner in which it does so. It is a kind of report on life as any member of the
audience would like to see it. Since at the same time, however, he sees a good
deal that he has no wish to see; since therefore he sees his wishes not merely
fulfilled but also criticized (sees himself not as the subject but as the
object), he is theoretically in a position to appoint a new function for the theatre.
(Brecht: 1979, 90)
This means that Brecht is giving the bourgeois
audience their fantasy of the criminal world, but, at specific moments, he
gives them a dose of harsh reality.
Brecht exposes his understanding of death penalty in
the play. The dancers will be the ones to face the rich spectators with their
hypocritical behaviour, demanding decorum today and abusing them tomorrow. And
perhaps through that rudimentary feeling of moral tolerance towards the poor,
the ray of hope which shines in this opera’s chaotic closing moments could be
explained. For when it seems that the leader of the gangsters is going to be
executed, an unexpected pardon arrives, which moves the chorus to sing:
Injustice should be spared from persecution:
Soon it will freeze to death, for it is cold.
Think of the blizzards and the black confusion
Which in this vale of tears we must behold.
(Act III, 79)
Notice finally how, already in this earliest of works,
Brecht is proposing a notable correction of the merciless machinery of justice,
and, more directly still, of the death penalty, for this positive penal law
seems inhuman to him. Thus, Brecht is not only expressing a profound feeling of
compassion and mercy towards that poor criminal, the victim of social
injustice, but also a great respect and compassion for every human creature,
however perverse he or she may seem.
Nevertheless, all these dramatic modifications have been
made to suit and serve two main purposes: the Brechtian ideological attitude of
how human relations are affected or determined by economic, social and
political forces and that is one of the main themes of The Threepenny Opera,
and to borrow from opera a dramatic form and adapt it so that it reached to a
new audience; and in so doing they created a new type of musical theatre.
Other critical views mix admiration and doubts of this
Brechtian adaptation of the play. Lotte Lenya, one of the stars of the original
production (and wife of composer Kurt Weill), recollected about the play in
the1940s, “Respected Berlin theatre oracles slipped out to spread the word that
Brecht and Weill proposed to insult the public with a ludicrous mishmash of
opera, operetta, cabaret, straight theatre, outlandish American jazz, not one
thing or the other.” (Lenya: 1960, xiii) She asserts that he was eclectic and
unabashed about borrowing from other cultural sources as part of his own
creative genius. Lenya describes what was Brecht’s tendency,
As his admirers have it: to adapt, reinterpret,
re-create, magnificently add modern significance; or in his detractors’ eye: to
pirate, plagiarize, shamelessly appropriate – to borrow at will from the
vanished greats like Marlowe and Shakespeare and Villon, and even from his
actual or near contemporaries like Kipling and Gorky and Klabund.
(Lenya: 1960, V)
As such, when the idea came to him to resurrect The Beggar’s Opera but in a satirical manner that would ultimately highlight Brecht’s socialist ideals, the borrowing of Gay’s story and characters was not only convenient, it was quite appropriate. After all, Gay’s original production had been laced with political satire itself.
References
Brecht, Bertolt. The Threepenny Opera. Trans. Ralph Manheim and John Willett. London: Eyre Methuen, 1979.
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre. Trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang.,1957.
Cardullo,Bert. Brecht, Pinter, and the Avant-Garde: Three Essays on Modernist Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
Fuegi, John. The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht. London: Flamingo, 1995.
Gaskell, Roland. Drama and Reality: The European Theatre since Ibsen. London: Routledge and Kegan Pul, 1972.
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Oregon: University of Oregon, 1995.
Lenya, Lotte. “August 28, 1928.” The Threepenny Opera. Trans. Desmond Vesey and Eric Bentley. New York: Grove, 1960.
Lubbock, Mark. The Complete Book of Light Opera. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962.
Ubersfeld, A. Reading Theatre. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1999.
Ullman, Montague. “Note on The Threepenny Opera”.
American Journal of Psychotherapy. Vol. XIII, No. 2 (April, 1959): 429-435.
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