Wulfstan’s Literary Tumble
Issue 2 Summer 2011
rich quick, no on knew how, and he
able to look to for our own moral
made it look honest. He was nobody from Southern England who came to power and “magically” earned a good amount of money.He is being directly attacked in this play for that act. Gay is questioning his sudden wealth and satirizing him for his mysterious fortune. Gay is making fun of him for having money mysteriously, and looking into the
strength, and we cannot because they themselves are not moral.
eyes of the English people and telling them he came by it honestly. The satire of Walpole is reminiscent of any satire today of the American President Richard Nixon. He is a present day Walpole, who stole from the people then insisted he was not a crook. Nixon still gets satirized for his role in Watergate, exactly as Walpole was satirized in the media written by John Gay. Mrs. Peachum represents Queen Caroline and a scandal that was believed to have happened between her and Sir Walpole. It is believed Queen Caroline gave Sir Walpole favors because they slept together. Mrs Peachum, in the pattern of Queen Caroline who saved her lover a few times, saves one of the thieves from being hanged, because it looks as if they might have slept together. Gay satirizes the immorality of people of the government here, taking a turn from greed to touch on lust. He satirizes the fact that these are people we are supposed to be
Satire itself is thick in this play, but the play is also funny. It is comical to see the Prime Minister of your country on the stage, exposed as a thief, and it is farcical to be able to laugh at a character representing him, when you cannot laugh at his face. This play also has all the aspects of a comedy. It has blocking characters, a happy ending and a romance. To have a comedy amongst thieves is in itself funny. These characters are trying to run a business seriously, but the way they do it is funny. Their language is comical, and their attitudes in general about their way of life makes a reader shake their heads in wonder and amusement. One comical character, who is also part of the love match, is MacHeath. MacHeath is obsessed with lust. His tragical/comical fall is due to a weakness for women. MacHeath‟s weakness for women proves to be a way of dramatizing a more paradoxical flaw in this „hero‟: the error of supposing that the society he moves in honors any values except money. This is a romantic, comic satire of greed because MacHeath supposes people actually care about things such as romance, and each other. It is obvious how 36