William Hogarth, A Scene from 'The Beggar's Opera' VI 1731
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This is among the first paintings ever made of an English stage performance. It depicts a climactic scene from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, first performed at the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre in 1728. Here the opera’s central character, a highwayman named Macheath, stands chained, under sentence of death, between his two lovers, the jailer’s daughter, Lucy Lockit, and, to the right, the lawyer’s daughter, Polly Peachum. They in turn plead for his life. At either side of the stage Hogarth has included members of the audience, notably at the far right the Duke of Bolton, real-life lover of the actress, Lavinia Fenton, who played the part of Polly Peachum.
September 2004
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